Memorial Day Weekend: Mother's Day Redux

Hi boys and girls, Danny writing. This is my first posting, so if you are a regular at this blog and the following post seems... different, then that's why.

As you may recall, Mother's Day was terrible at the McPherson household. We had planned on so many fun things, but all was put on hold because I threw out my back. Yes, there's nothing quite like the pain of muscle tearing near your spine. But two weeks later, I'm surprised to say that it feels completely healed. So this weekend Mother's Day was redone in the form of much needed landscaping, and me taking care of the kid all day Sunday.

When Frances and I bought our house, it was a foreclosure in need of work. Because we prioritized the inside of the house before the outside, the yard has looked pretty terrible since we moved in. Last summer, however, we did make a significant improvement by replacing several large sections of the front "yard" (the worst section being 50% dirt + 40% weeds + 10% bermuda) with St. Augustine grass. Here's a pic from last summer:

If you look close, you can see the new grass on the right side of the yard, bushes by the sidewalk from the driveway to the front door, bushes to the left of the front door, and trees that have apparently never been pruned.

So last week Frances called the tree dudes to come rip out the bushes in front and prune the trees. Then here's what we did on Saturday:

8am came early. Up, out of bed. Get dressed. Get kid ready. Two cars to Home Depot, with Frannie taking a detour to Starbucks. 4 bags of DARK mulch, 2 bags of native Texas dillo dirt. Back home. Move pretty white border stones to drive way for a rinse. Clear out old "decorative" rocks (using the word decorative loosely) and over turn soil in front of porch. Mix in dillo dirt. Place stones in circular pattern around tree bases. Fill mulch in each. Spread dillo dirt to low places in yard. Back to home depot. More mulch, more dillo dirt, 6 pieces St. Augustine sod, 36 monkey grass plants for porch border. Back home. Plant monkey grass while getting sun burned. Cover with mulch. Add art. Plant sod. Watch it rain. Go to sleep exhausted. (In the pic, notice how well the St. Augustine filled in from last year)

Sunday I take over Jack responsibilities for Frances while she experienced freedom. This mainly consisted of her running errands, but it was a good break for her to get away from the house. And since I'm always cold (at work and at home) Jack functioned as a cosy portable heater while I studied about church doctrine and its roots.

Monday. Nothing planned except Frances wanted to trim the remaining bushes near the front door, and maybe spread the last bag of dillo dirt. I don't know what came over us, but we agreed the 3 front bushes by the front door needed to go as well. So what was going to just be another 1 hour of work, turned into 7. Frances + Danny + branch cutters + an ax + two shovels + synchronous tugging and pulling + tending to Jack + 3 hours = victory over the bushes. After Frances made a quick trip to the Home Depot to get more dark mulch, a welcome sign, and some plants, we set it all up and called it good. Check out the before and after:

And finally, here's a close up of Frannie's artistic skillz:

So then we took nice long naps. Thank you Jack for respecting the nap. He did so well through all of this! When he wasn't napping he was outside with us in the shade grabbing his toys and yelling at them with excitement. But there was one tramatic incident where the ice-cream truck stopped at the house across the street to service some kids. It was interesting to him at first. But his interest soon turned to discontent (joining mom and dad).

So here we are at the conclusion of the long weekend. One of these days we're actually going to relax and take it easy. But we'll enjoy it more if all the chores are done first :)