Spring is sprung!

Today was beautiful! It was in the 80s. When I heard earlier in the week that it was supposed to be nice, I decided to do yard work. And it was WORK! We borrowed a rototiller from someone in the ward and tilled up a large strip of garden/lawn in the back by our neighbor's fence. There were some flowers there that we wanted to save, so I stuck them in pots to be replanted in the front, but the rest was all tilled up. There were so many things growing back there, with very little organization, so we decided to just begin all over again. I'm going to plant a raspberry bush back there, and some flowers, and maybe some tomato plants. We were pulling up roots like crazy (apparently things have been growing randomly for years back there, and everything is very root-bound).

If you look behind Mr. Nently in this pic (he was being forced to take a bath in the bird bath) you can see the stuff growing in the back that we tilled under.

There were flat brick-like paving stones buried under the edge of the fence, so we pulled those out, and we also got rid of a small tree. It already looks so much better out there, and nothing's even planted yet!

Once Jason went to work at 2 I cleaned up and got started in the front garden. There are two, one on either side of the porch. I'll take some pics and put them on here one of these days. There were a total of 6 bushes in the 2 gardens, but they didn't all match. One side has 3 of the same, but the other side had 2 of another kind, and 1 of a third. We decided we wanted a more symetrical look, so a week ago I uprooted one bush, and today I did the other 2. It's a lot of work to uproot a bush, especially when there are 2 layers of weed cloth that have been there since the dawn of time, and they're covered and innundated with roots. So first I had to get rid of the weed cloth and then dig out the bushes. By the time I was done with that, I was pooped, so I called it a day.

Earlier Jason was washing the birds' cages outside and one of our parakeets, Samson, flew away. His wings were clipped, but he can still glide if he starts from off of the ground, so we had no idea where he went. We searched for 1/2 hour or so, and some neighbors even helped us search. I gave up after awhile, and eventually started crying. I was really bummed. Jason didn't want to see me unhappy, so he kept looking. All of a sudden he tells me to get the cage because he found him! I was so excited. He was on our neighbor's porch across the street sitting on a chair. I had looked in their bushes below the porch, but didn't look on it, because I didn't think he'd go that high. He was probably sitting above me the entire time. Jason held the cage up to him with our other parakeet in it, and he hopped on Jason's finger and then into the cage. And the peasants rejoiced! Samson acted like nothing happened and started cleaning the other parakeet.

Sorry this is so long, but it was a long day! We also borrowed a chainsaw from the same ward people and we (mainly Jason) cut up the limbs from the ice storm, and got them stacked in the front yard for the city to pick up. I feel like we're finally making progress on the yard!