We got the keys to this house and moved our very first boxes in on June 2 of this year. Then school ended, and the big kid had various camps, and we went out of town for two weeks, and it was just busy for a minute. But since about mid-July, it’s been pretty chill. And every day, every single day, I have tried to get the big kid to UNPACK HER DAMN ROOM. The day the movers moved our stuff in, she and a dear little 2nd grade (I think) friend unpacked and organized her stuff. She was VERY excited and had grand plans. That was the actual last time she put any effort into unpacking her room. School starts this coming Wednesday, and finally last Friday I told her that whatever was left to do in her room would be done on Sunday, and she was going to pay us to help her. It worked! She spent all day Sunday unpacking and cleaning, and on Sunday night she was done, capping off what was basically a perfect birthday weekend.
You know what makes a perfect birthday weekend for me? Gardening presents, and time to garden. Also, snuggles, amazing food, fun childless time with my husband, and more amazing food with dear friends in my wonderful failure of a garden. Oh! I even spent some time in my garden but NOT DOING GARDENING. This is rare! Usually if I’m outside, I feel like I have to be doing something. But on Saturday friends were soon to arrive, and I was wearing basically the one thing I don’t want to get ruined – my aspirational denim jumpsuit from Goodwill. So instead of sitting in the dirt, I actually laid down on my hammock and just breathed. That was kind of incredible.
Anyway, my thoughtful husband heard me randomly say to myself one day that I needed a gardening apron, and he found a perfect one! And it even came with knee pads. So I spent all day Sunday gardening in my hilariously awesome get-up, while the big kid cleaned her room and my husband played with the little one. So what’s going on out there?
Well, I cleaned up the entryway bed, which makes me feel so much better. I just really hate walking past a bunch of dead stuff as I walk into my house. It’s another kind of messed-up bed, with plants planted willy-nilly as far as I can tell, and not with any sort of thought to sun needs. That’s the worst thing that whoever planted this yard did – NOTHING is in the sun it needs. So this poor fern is in the north-facing yard, with basically no protection. I just cleaned up us much brown foliage as I could, and I have no idea what I’m going to do with it.
But I did discover that it’s actually putting out new growth and it is SO FUZZY.
It feels just like petting Jasper the bunny’s feet. And now I know why there is that fern called rabbit foot fern, except let’s be real – those “rabbit feet” look like tarantula legs and I will never, ever have one of those. They scare the shit out of me. Anyway, this north-facing unprotected bed also has tragic hostas and a super crappy bleeding heart in it and it’s just infuriating to me.
But! After I did some stuff to the entryway bed, I was like, Ugh, I guess I gotta deal with the corner of the yard. This corner, it’s so weird. It’s one of the front corners of the front yard, up against the sidewalk. They landscape fabric-ed the whole sidewalk edge, but they only planted the very corners, and this corner…it has one blue fescue. That is it. And it’s not even really in the corner, it’s like…in a couple feet, all alone. Completely surrounded by the damn mallow. This is the first time I’d even weeded this corner and the mallow was GINORMOUS and at least not going to seed but whoa making some taproots. So I was out there cursing the weirdos who designed this yard, when a butterfly visited me! It was such a lovely experience. I put down my tools and just sat there and watched it, for a long time. Of course my picture sucks because iPhone 6, but it was honestly probably the calmest moment I’ve had in months.
Then I went to the stupid crabgrass bed, and I had a great time with a sudden bed renovation! I realized the strawberry coming in from the neighbor’s yard was being choked out by the kinnickinick and I was like, Oh hell no. Something that will give me delicious berries versus an aphid-harboring overly aggressive groundcover that the weirdos overplanted? Duh. So I ripped out a bunch of kinnickinick. I should maybe probably have cleaned it up and put it up on Buy Nothing or something like that, but that is not the half-assed way. I even discovered a tiny little Lupine struggling amongst the crazy! So that bed is looking much nicer, except of course for the constant onslaught of crabgrass.
After that I still did even more! There are these two Weigelas in the back yard that look terrible. They are obviously supposed to be a deep purple, but they really are not. I cut some back and the new foliage is looking better, but one still was a lot of dead sticks, so I did a very slow, thorough pruning while poor husband continued to play Octonauts with the little one.
Oh and I even deadheaded my lavender! And that was a really lovely way to end the gardening, very slowly intentionally deadheading and dropping the seeds on the ground to see if they’ll take. I have no idea if they will. But it smelled so nice and was so calm. Then I had to go back to real life and play Octonauts while husband made dinner.
So anyway. 41 is looking pretty decent. I’ve got a garden and a thoughtful husband and good friends and funny kids and there is good food for us all to eat. And a bunny. The big kid starts MIDDLE SCHOOL Wednesday. How is that even possible? Go back in my posts – it seems like she was a funny little baby with raspberry juice all over her face yesterday. Wish us luck.
The Half-Assed Homesteader, aka Plants and Birds Mostly 