Productive weekend

Weekends can be a lot of things – fun, tiring, exciting.  But, there are few better things to me these days than being able to say my weekend was productive…and I mean REALLY productive.  Robert and I got the attic completely cleaned out and organized.  We took all of our old stuff to charity.  We pulled up all the old flowers and planted over 200 annuals in the front yard.  We bought 36 bags of mulch and re-mulched all of the beds in the front yard and about 1/3 of the beds in the back yard.  Productive, right?!  Why were we able to get so much done?  One reason and one reason only….GJ!

GJ got here early Saturday morning and played with Maxwell all day while Robert and I cleaned out the attic.  It felt SO good to get that project done.  Now the “finished” attic space is ready to be finished a little more and turned into Robert’s office/kid’s playroom!

While we worked, Maxwell and GJ christened our new sand and water table…which quickly became the murky water table.  He wasn’t too good at keeping the sand and water separate!

I think it might just be a sand OR water table from now on!  🙂

But he sure had fun splashing that murky water all around!

On Sunday, GJ and I were out in the yard by 6:45 am to plant flowers (me), dig up the dead grass along the edges of the bed (GJ), and spread lots of mulch (me, Robert and GJ).  What did Maxwell do?  Provide superior help, of course!

Every yardman needs a good Fire Chief’s hat, right?

I don’t even know how to explain to you all what all my mom does for us and everyone in the family.  I have never met anyone that works harder.  Period.  It was a lot of work for the three of us to get all of that done Sunday morning and I still can’t believe that she did the same amount of work by herself this past fall when she surprised us with a yard full of awesome pansies.

I had actually called a landscape guy about coming out to spread mulch and plant a bunch of annuals but he wanted to charge me $3200.  Excuse me?!  With a little blood (literally from the rose bush thorns), sweat (umm…lots) and tears (but only from Maxwell) we got it all done in 1 day and saved ourselves about $2500.  I’m pretty darn proud of us and now I know we can do it every year…as long as GJ comes to help!  🙂

I grew up in a family of yard workers.  Both of my parents were always out there every weekend working hard and we always had a beautiful yard because of it.  While I can’t say I’ll ever be able to work as hard as they did, I am very proud of what all Robert and I have been able to do in our yard.  My parents taught me to take pride in our yard and hopefully Robert and I are teaching Maxwell the same thing!  I think it’s so good for him to see us out there working hard.  Gotta start em young…

A few pics of my newly planted verbena and vinca to wrap things up.

There’s nothing more satisfying than hard work done well!  Hope you all had a productive weekend too!