But it also, inevitably it seems, brings spring cleaning.
Oh, I like our home and property looking nice. I just don't enjoy the work that goes into it.
Especially when some of it could be avoided in the first place.
Case in point:
We've had these bushes sitting out in front of my office now for several years. My wife decided they'd grown too large, so we essentially cut them down to the ground. But we didn't remove them completely. I guess she wants them to grow back. In the meantime, we've got stubs.
Which means we'll be right back at it in the future cutting them down to size again.
Then, of course, there's the endless amount of weeding.
I suppose it doesn't help that the vegetable beds were left to themselves for the last seven months, but still, weeds shouldn't be the most prolific things to grow in nature, next to blackberry vines. My wife was pulling them out by hand, but I grabbed a hoe and whacked them. Took out some of my aggression.
Some of the cleaning isn't all bad. My wife has been after me for a while now to cut up some two by fours we've had left over from fencing and other projects. They've just been sitting around more or less acting as a tripping hazard (fortunately, though, they've been sitting on the side of our garden shed that none of us really ever go).
I bought a new battery operated saw a while back that I haven't really used, so it was kind of cool to fire it up (once I figured out how to take out the allen wrench so I could actually put a blade on it).
Here's the results of that.
This all happened on Saturday, with my wife doing quite a bit more weeding and pruning in addition. Once she gets started, she can't stop until she gets tired, starts aching, or the sun goes down.
Thankfully, no household chores took place on Easter Sunday.
However, thing started up again this morning. She has the week off from work (she had to request it six months ago, before we knew anything about the coronavirus), so she's home and looking at what else to do.
I came into the house this morning and found this.
A minute or so before this, she was out on the roof, hanging with one hand onto one end of the window pane while she used the other hand to clean it.
I didn't know she was doing it and feel lucky now that I didn't startle her when I came into the room. That part of the roof isn't that far off the ground once you get to the gutter, but still. She's 60 and I'm not one to tempt fate. She's like a daredevil with this sort of stuff, more so, I think, because she knows I don't like it. I'm not so afraid of heights. It's the falling part I have issues with.
After that window, the largest one we have in the house, it was on to the next. Fortunately, there's nothing to climb out on, so she couldn't do that. Unfortunately, she wanted to swing around as much she could to do the outside while standing on a step stool or the window sill.
I convinced her that wasn't such a good idea, and took the rag and got as much of the outside of the window as I could while keeping everything but my arm on the inside.
After this window, she went to another, this time enlisting our younger son to help. Or else he couldn't stand to see her hanging out of it so he took the rag and did it himself. Like his mother, he's more of the daredevil type. He once put the recycle cart on top of the garbage cart to climb up through his second story bedroom window because he locked himself out while my wife and I were out of the state.
I know there's more to be done. She's wanting to pressure wash all the concrete we have from the patio to the area between the house and my office, along with the driveway.
I'm also supposed to get out at some point and rototill the garden beds so we can start planting a garden. That didn't work out so well with both of us working last year, so I'm not sure how it's going to be any better this year, but at the same time, I hate to give up on it completely.
Especially with the way things are with the coronavirus. With things locked down indefinitely, there doesn't appear to be much of an end in sight yet, though I have read about some improvements on the national level. How that translates as far as Oregon where I live goes, I have my doubts.
So, there you go. The start of house and yard work, with more to come. Thanks, spring.
On Friday, I posted that spring, more in the way of nature, came to our home.
Well, since then a few more things have bloomed, so I thought I'd add them to the tail end of this post.
If you saw the previous post, I had a picture there of our apple tree. I trimmed it down last month, and the remaining branches had leaves come out of the tops of them. Here's what it looked like (this was taken last Thursday):
The next morning, that same tree looked, I kid you not, like this:
It literally bloomed overnight.
I noticed as I went along the backyard that more things were opening up or blooming.
I really like the color of these flowers, even though their shape and thickness aren't that pretty to me. I think they actually look better once they're open so I'll have to go back and look in a day or so.
This one has opened up all the way and is just sitting out there by itself. I like the color of it, too, but the tiny spikes on the petals are a little offputting. Reminds me of a venus fly trap, though that's not what it is. I tried looking it up but Google couldn't figure it out, either, and my wife doesn't remember the name of it.
That seems to happen a lot. She finds flowers on sale she likes and then they wind up in the barkdust belt along the fence line.
These are the last remaining calla lilies we have back there. We had more, until we discovered that they're poisonous to cats. We don't have any, but the neighbor across the street does. Or did. I haven't seen it for quite some time. Maybe more than year. It did like to get into our backyard...
Yeah, I know, which surprises me a bit.
This is one of the three rose bushes we have sitting at the northeast corner, just off the patio. It might be a tad early for it yet, but I know when I see it blooming I'm always thinking it should be later in the year, more towards mid-summer rather than mid-to-late spring. It might be another month or so before it happens. I guess I'd better keep an eye on it. It has seen better days.
Images courtesy of Glen Anthony Albrethsen
