By their fruits...

Since Saturday was the day after the first day of spring, and it was decent (by decent I mean it wasn't raining bucket loads or snowing like hell had just frozen over) we decided to try and get some yard work done. Our yard has been in desperate need of "spring cleanup". Okay it has been in desperate need of a giant overhaul, but who has had the time or ambition when the weather has been so nasty.

I wanted to write about how on the first day of spring, my true love did for me and then name 12 wonderful things... but since we didn't fair to well, my song will have to wait until the first day of summer. We did manage to...

remove the old raised garden, spread the dirt and start preparation for our row of raspberries. I bought 5 cascade, 5 tumaleen and 5 meeker. When planted at 1 foot intervals, that makes a 15 feet row of raspberries. YUM! When we planted them last time, we put them in a raised row of dirt then topped it with composted manure. Each spring we would add another load of composted manure and would get a huge amount of raspberries (we also had a soaker hose that we would water a couple times a week with). I will show another picture when we get done.



I know this looks like a mud pit right now, but someday, it will be wonderful.

We also managed (and I use the word "we" very loosely) to put some lovely ruts in the front and backyard with the tractor. Our grass was still quite soggy from all the rain and when moving the dirt from the raised garden, "we" managed to do this to the backyard...



Closeup. See how muddy our grass is.



That is part of the loveliness of living in Washington. I will have to say that laying in your bed at night as the wind blows and the rain comes down in torrents, you feel very grateful for a hard working husband who provides a warm safe place to live.

And here is the damage to the front yard...


I have been consoled by the fact that my husband said he wanted to revamp the yard anyways and was going to do a major overhaul on the grass. I guess this is our motivation. My husband is a very hard worker and I know that it will look great when he gets it done. I also found out he reads my blog, but that ISN'T why I said that. I really meant it, mostly, no really I did, kind of.

On the lighter side. We planted 4 of our fruit trees. Courtney was very persistant and dug one hole all by herself. Coty dug 2 and I dug one. We planted 2 apple trees, beni shogun and pristine, and 2 pear, bartlett and comice. (Don't mind the mole hills in the back, somebody (cough) Lucky Dog (cough) hasn't been doing her job. (in my best Jedi Night Voice I wave my hand in front of your face "you don't notice the fence needs to be painted, it is a lovely fence with a fresh coat of paint, or will be this summer).



As we were planting the last one I realized that we planted 4 trees and have 4 children. So I told each of my 3 children (Blain is on his mission) to pick a tree that would be theirs. Then I said that we would see whose tree produced the most fruit, and that would show how much faith each child truely had. If their tree didn't produce much fruit they had better work on having more faith. Then of course they were trying to decide which was planted better, which looked better, which had better soil and so on. Unfortunately Blain got stuck with the leftover tree, but since he is on his mission, I am sure it will prosper fine :) By their fruits ye shall know them.

So that was our successful get out in the yard and work day. The finale was that as my husband was up helping his brother with his house later that night, he stepped in a hole and ended up hurting his neck. Man I love spring!

Edited: ohhh, I wanted to add, look at those cool rubber rings I put at the base of my fruit trees. They are suppose to the weeds from growing, make it easier to mow around without destroying your trees and hold the moisture in when it gets hot. We bought them at Lowes. I will let you know how great they are.