No Pain, No Gain

If that isn't the truth, I'm not sure what is! I can barely move right now, every step is paired with a grimace and I seem to be stumbling about in a style fashioned after Frankenstein. I'm relatively young, why does my body hate me so? Perhaps because I gave it hardcore abuse for nearly twenty years before laying off and getting lazy. Ah, well.

Shuffle step or no, my yard looks EONS better than it did before I got down and dirty - literally down and dirty! Said dirt is also the reason why I missed out on a full weekend of updates.

Saturday began good and early, up with the sun, and had my dad and I headed out of town. We went to the nearest Home Depot and loaded up our borrowed trailer with extreme amounts of wooden boards, wooden slabs, and wooden posts. And because that wasn't enough wood for us, we stopped off and bought several still-alive wooden beings as well (aka trees).

This took up the majority of the day considering the nearest Home Depot is about half an hour away and when one is traveling with an overloaded trailer dragging along behind their vehicle, tetchy contraption it is, one doesn't get to drive over forty miles per hour. Ugh!

However, there were pockets of time stolen away to look over a wide variety of trees, bushes, flowers, and the sort as well as *bonus* a quick stop at an antique store that left me wiping away the steady flow of drool that escaped my lips before strangers had a chance to take notice. When my eyes bugged out of my head like an old Warner Brother's cartoon character - well, that was understandably harder to hide. Ya win some, ya loose some.

Sunday began at least as early as Saturday, my body pleasantly sore from all the unloading of massive bits of wood. I got to play with a couple of cans of spray paint and decided to start twelve projects all at once. Thanks to my neurotic behaviors, by the end of the day all of the missions were accomplished. Tooting my own horn on that:: TOOT freaking tooty TOOT TooT!

I began with shoveling up massive amounts of monkey grass. Horrid stuff, that monkey grass. It has roots that delve deep and cling like a... well, like a monkey. And it spread, spawns, reproduces and conquers the world nearest to its command center. E-vil. EVIL!

I got frustrated with that after a while and wandered off only to return at the end of the day and finish the task. Before the sun set my forearms and the back of my neck had turned a shade of red that any tomato would envy and my yard looked like a different place completely.

Alllllll the wood we hauled
- stacked and stacked and stacked -

The real trees we bought
- my dad did the hard work of planting them -

cleaned off & prettied up the porch
- ewwwwy spider webs -

cut back all of the ivy
- found the sidewalk again -

that wasn't enough fighting with ivy
- so i took on all that was eating these rocks & won -

then i got addicted to the rocks and dug these up
- i stacked them and made the back of the yard spread uniform -

then I just wanted to play with rocks
- the pots are a result of my spray paint playing -

this was the other spray paint project
- part flower planter, part bird feeder, totally homemade -

the whole picture
- birds and squirrels alike come a'calling -

i wanted more plants and less birdfood
- so i tipped over an old tin bucket and got to moving some dirt -

for a homey touch i moved a relic out into the ivy
- this item is two years older than me and in better shape... sad -

Today I actually got out there and planted some flower seeds, built my homemade birdbath, and began a few other yard projects that I hope to have completed (and photographed!) by next week at the latest. I need to add a few more do-dads to my birdbath before planting it in the yard or sharing it here, but so far it's only cost me $3.50 and it's looking good. :D

Tomorrow it's supposed to rain, rain, rain, so I have no plan beyond lying pathetically on my couch, groaning at the fiery pain I still so freshly feel and the re-burned places on my arms and neck. (You would think I would have learned... and yet, I didn't.)

However, I bought five pairs of bamboo chopsticks from the dollar store (all of them for a dollar total) and plan on making myself some spiffy hair bling from them. *Grin* Oh! & I've got a project I'm working on for my girls. That could keep me entertained whilst the kiddos are at preschool, assuming we aren't all whisked away by the tornados they're threatening us with tonight!

My ramble has been long,
my good night hat is now on,
may the mighty winds blow,
away to Kansas we may goooo! :D

Bird Feeder/Planter::

Need ::
- Large flower pot
- 5 or more medium or small flower pots
- spray paint if you'd like
- long metal post
- heavy duty glue
- potting soil
- flower seeds
- bird seed

1. drill a hole in the center of your largest flower pot

2. locate where you want your yard art

3. dig a shallow hole, just big enough for your largest flower pot to snuggle into

4. hammer metal post through the center of the flower pot (through the hole) till well entrenched

5. fill pot with potting soil

6. dig small indention in soil and lower a smaller pot over the metal pole at an angle

7. repeat process with a second pot, facing the opposit direction
--- smear glue over lip of lower pot where the upper pot will sit against it
--- repeat till height is desired

8. i used a small collection of rocks in the base of each of my flower pots to help weight them and take up a little bit of space so i didn't loose/ruin too much bird seed. This is optional, do or don't do this step.

9. Fill upper pots with bird seed, plant flowers in the largest pot. Done!!