Recently, lots of BIG stuff has happened in my world. Hours of poring over applications and essays was rewarded, and I was accepted to graduate school. G was offered a new job. We've managed to trap and release a few squirrels. And we've done a significant amount of yardwork.
My yard has been a never ending sea of torment. First, there was a horrid ivy infestation. (I'm still dealing with that, but now it seems to be more about maintenance than eradication.) Our yard was mulched with a couple of inches of pine straw that started to look gross after a season of never ending wet weather and mountains of leaves. We had no grass in the front yard. We had three different types of fencing. (We're down to two.) We had nowhere to park.
In the last two weeks we've built a driveway, raked up the pine straw on one side of our yard, and put down grass seed.
In the process of raking our yard, I found:
- At least two empty bottles of Schlitz
- An empty bottle of Miller High Life (add that to the millions of caps I've found around the yard)
- various children's toys
- a fishing lure
- a spring from a screen door
- broken glass
- a potpourri of food wrappers and other trash
Earlier this week, G spent a couple of hours working on the yard. Yesterday we managed to get the ground broken up and planted grass seed. We're keeping the ground moist, so I've got my fingers crossed that we'll start to see shoots soon.
The frame for the driveway came together quickly. Last weekend was sunny and gorgeous. And I got to use power tools. It's always a great day when I get to use power tools. We're hoping to get gravel delivered next week.
After we get the rest of the seed down and the gravel spread, we're going to start building flower beds. The year's goals are to widen and extend the path from our steps to the street, build a path from our driveway to the steps, and build flowerbeds around the driveway. Those projects are for other weekends. Right now my body hurts too much to conceive of more hard physical labor. (G told me yesterday that the type of labor I was doing, breaking up soil, is usually reserved for prisoners.) So tonight, I'll kick it with a glass of wine and go to bed early.
Oh, and the wine I'm drinking? It's Relax Cool Red. I really like Relax Riesling; it's easy to drink and it's a great after dinner wine. Cool Red was marketed as a wine similar to Beaujolais Villages, fruity, sweet, a young wine. That's true to a certain extent. It is a sweet, fruity, young wine. However, it's a completely different beast than Beaujolais. Cool Red tastes a lot like cherries. It's the kind of wine I can picture myself drinking outside, with a light dinner, watching the lightening bugs come out. G liked more as a dessert wine, but I could see drinking it with the right meal. We liked it.
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