My Reasons

My Reasons

This Is Where It All Begins

This Is Where It All Begins

Friday, April 27, 2012

Nesting in Nature

As with all of my pregnancies at this point, I am nesting...big time. There is one big difference this time around though. I have been going nuts on the yard instead of the house. I did a big change to our family room just over a month ago. The decor is totally different from what it was before, and I LOVE it! The rest of the house will be changing as well, but over time. My plans are all set, I am just saving up for the bigger items and still working through some color schemes. I think the family room change got the house nesting bug out of my system for a while.

Saturday was a BEAUTIFUL day. People were out working in their yards and enjoying the sunshine. Something sparked in me, and I had this huge urge to do yard work. Major yard work. But I couldn't. You see, we spent the day Saturday getting a new car. That blog post is coming soon. We love the car, but not being able to full my urge to get out in the yard, only made it fester. By Monday morning, I was literally exploding with the desire to get outside and "clean up" the yard. The weather was gorgeous again, so I slapped on my gloves and went to work. I spent 5 1/2 hours in the yard on Monday. With the help of my awesome neighbor and friend, we pulled out two very dead bushes in our front flower bed. (the roots were huge and very deep) Then I raked and shoveled out all of the leaves and junk that have collected there. Then Trudy and I did a serious trim to all of the bushes. We took pile after pile after pile of branches, leaves, rocks and weeds to the garbage. Both of our cans were filled to overflowing and weight well over 200 lbs. I couldn't budge the garbage can, and Ben had a hard time getting it out to the road today. I hope the garbage truck can lift it.
Then it was time to weed. After weeding, it was weed killer time and then off to the store to buy some top soil. After that I mowed the lawn, and fertilized the whole thing. I also got the sprinkler system all set up and made sure everything was working properly. By that evening, the front flower bed looked completely different and so awesome. The lawn looked great and I was elated to have been in the yard all day. It felt great! Not to mention I was EXTREMELY sore and sunburned. Yard work is not easy when 34 weeks pregnant.

The next day I bought flowers and planted them in the flower bed. My first flowers! I love them so much. They are my babies and I am constantly looking at them and pampering them. The flower bed went from a dead bush, weedy, leaf filled mess, to this.

The flowers, when in full bloom, will fill the full flower bed. I can't wait to see it in about a month. And I am proud. I also got weed killer and sprayed all over our back patio and around several bushes and trees.

The next day was the brutal yard work. We have a fence lined with rose bushes.  Maya chewed two of them down to almost nothing, but somehow they are surviving.

The bushes have been surrounded by rock and gravel and cinder block. Weeds have grown through the rocks, and the cinder block, and the place looked horrible. It has been very overwhelming to me to look at it.

But not this week. I attacked the place. For four hours. And it was very hard. I not only pulled weeds taller than me (the poky kind), but I had to shovel out all of the rocks and gravel along the whole fence line, put them in buckets and make over 20 trips to the trash can to dump them out.

I uncovered several ant hills, and ended up with ants all over me.  At one point I literally had over 100 ants all over my arms, neck and hands.
Along with spiders, rose thorn slivers, and cuts and scrapes everywhere, I met all sorts of creatures.
William was with me for some of the time, and he was actually a great helper. He helped put rocks in the buckets, pick ants off of me, and even pulled some weeds. Cute kid.

 I am so happy with how the hard work paid off. The rose bushes now look amazing and it made a huge difference in the yard!

The past few days I have been to sore to do any more work in the yard, but every time I look outside, I smile. I have discovered that I have a big love of working out in nature. I have known it all my life, but combined with nesting, it is awesome. I can feel that the earth is alive and I feel like I am taking care of my small patch of it. It is great to get dirty, get the fresh air, and to beautify. Not to mention, I may have filled the nesting bug...for a few days anyway.

1 comment:

Colleen said...

Gardening is a pretty wonderful experience! So glad you have found something you love!