Friday, May 18, 2018

What's Happening Here?

Well Spring has definitely spring around here!!  We've had so much lovely weather, that we've been spending hoursssss outside every afternoon/evening!  

In the beginning, we decided that the hill on the edge of our new driveway was hazardously steep.  (Really, I feel down it twice, and Kurt fell down it once.)  A few weeks ago, when we had the Bobcat, we piled all this dirt up to start leveling out the hill.  




And then we started bricking up a wall....


And we bricked some more....


Until we were finally done with one side! 


Then we went and picked up a mountain of plants! Two car fulls!!



And then we dropped 'em in! 


Big Improvement, right?  Those 2x4s on the right, mark where the stairs will go.  


So I picked up a truckload of 6x6 pressure treated, and Kurt got to work cutting them in half.


But the 6x6s are so thick, that even cutting through each side with the circular saw, you still have to finish them off with the hand saw.



Six of 'em all sliced and stacked!


 I measured the rise and run of the hill.  Eight feet, and twenty-four inches.  Based on that, the steps will generally look like this! I just stacked them up in the garage, to test fit, and make sure they'd be stable enough. 


And after all of that, we got to digging--again.  Why do all of our projects involve so much digging?!  We've talked about it, and decided that by the time all, or even most of our projects are done, we're going to have killer backs and biceps haha  


Kurt said that cutting in and assembling the steps has gone more easily than he expected it to.  Hopefully that's a good thing!  We're about halfway through putting in the steps (literally, he's put in two steps haha)  Unfortunately, it started raining this afternoon, and it's supposed to rain all weekend!  Boo! 



There's a bit of a lull in the rain right now, so Kurt is outside fertilizing.  That probably means that starting next week, we'll be mowing twice a week.  At least the flowers, and the garden like the rain.  And, it keeps the grass nice and green! 

I have to say, even with the rain, we really love living in the country!  And on the even brighter side, today we bought tickets to see Modest Mouse in Fort Wayne.  We managed to get third row center seats!


I love our life! 
K


Modest Mouse - Sunspots

Tuesday, May 1, 2018

Weekend Updates!


Happy May!

Have you ever heard the ol' trucker song, "Give me 40 Acres"?   Well that song was running through my head most of this weekend!  Kurt and I spent the weekend bush-hogging the back three (or so) acres of our yard. Let me just say up front--this was far less exciting than the previous Bobcat weekend. 

So here's what the thing looks like.  The best way to describe it would be it's like driving a cross between a 91' Cutlass with no power steering, and a mechanical bull.  It's terrible.  And three days later my hands still hurt!


I didn't take a great "before" photo, but if you zoom in on this photo below, everywhere that's brown was between one and four feet tall.  And it goes back for about 300 yards.  This is half of what we bush-hogged.  Woof. 







So, here's what it looks like when we were all done!  This is from about half way back in our yard.  The brown building in the distance on the left, is the barn that's at the edge of our driveway.  Basically this is a darn huge yard! 

Bush-hogging took four hours on Friday, and another few hours on Saturday.  Then Sunday, we tried a few things to clean up all the junk that we'd mowed down.  We tried using a leaf blower, the lawn mower, and a rake.  All of those things worked a little, but were very labor intensive. 

We ended up heading to Lowes and picking up this lawn sweeper.  Kurt put it together, and then took it for a few passes around the back 40!  As long as the grass is super fine, this thing will pick up 20 cubic feet at a time!

Unfortunately, when you've mowed 3 acres for the first time in a year, 20 cubic feet doesn't get you very far.  So, every night this week, we'll be out there sweeping, singing Give me 40 Acres, and enjoying the sunshine. 

K

Give me 40 Acres