Yard Day

Well, I am gradually returning to my normal life. Two weeks after graduation I've finally got the kitchen, living room, bathroom and my sewing room looking like a mom lives in this house again. :-)
I still have to get to my bedroom and the laundry room (which includes lots of laundry Ugh!).

Saturday morning Jessica shows us the height of the—crabgrass?—that didn't get mowed Friday night
(because it was under the swing).

Last Saturday the whole family worked on the yard. We are never the greatest gardeners or care-takers of the yard, but now our place is also showing the effects of us all being gone at scout camp for the last two summers. We are not going to camp this summer, so the yard is a priority. Which, for us, means we will at least try to mow and water the lawn. ;-)  OK. And we also want to grow a garden which, I suppose, means we will have to do weeding all summer too. We'll see how this plays out.

Rachel and Jessica are showing us how tall the garden weeds are. I actually did do some weeding earlier in the week, so you can see a little bare dirt there. A very little.

Well anyway, we all worked on the yard last Saturday, trying to reclaim it from the wild nightshade, milkweed, thistles, and other various weeds that have completely taken over. Seriously our back yard has about a 100-square-foot patch of yarrow growing in it where there should be lawn; it's quite pretty, but not what we really want.

Rachel rakes the weeds over to the edge of the garden. 

Bruce uses his manly strength to dig up more and more and more weeds.

And I am incredibly helpful—I bring them a box to put weeds in.
See how many bags and boxes they've already filled?

Besides the weeding of the yard, we also needed to clean out the shed. You remember the shed was built in December, and we had only one day to transfer stuff from the garage to the shed, so it was pretty disastrous in there.

looking in at the shed door
We couldn't open it enough to get a broader view—too much stuff piled behind the door.

We had some cans of wheat out in the shed which we decided should probably not be further exposed to the whims of Utah weather (especially in a non-insulated shed). So that morning Lindsey worked on cleaning up a space in our new indoor storage area where we could transfer the wheat.

It was also Kaylie's 13th birthday last Saturday. Yay! So in the morning while the family slaved away outside, I stayed in and baked her a couple of lemon meringue pies (her requested birthday treat—we almost never do cake around here). By the time the pies were out of the oven everyone was asking for lunch. (I had bribed them all with a hamburger lunch.) So I worked on burgers & all the fixin's, coleslaw, and cutting up watermelon, and never really made it outside to help until after lunch.

Ryan happily awaits lunch.

I confess, after lunch Bruce and I took a nap.

Then, around 3:00 or so, we all went back to work outside.

I worked inside the shed and everyone else worked on painting the outside of it.

And it made the shed happy.

Well, we paused for Kaylie's requested birthday dinner (pasta primavera—yum!), and then the kids were off the hook for the day.

Brad and his family came to visit that evening, so we all watched Bruce finish up the painting while we visited. And then we sang ♫ Happy Birthday Dear Kaylie ♪♫, and had lemon pie and ice cream. :-)

There's still a lot to do. We're hoping to finish weeding and tilling the garden over the next two days so we can plant seeds this Saturday.

Is it possible for the Norths to have a decent yard? I'll keep you posted.