Hard work or hard fun??

A couple of weeks ago we actually had a weekend that was nice and cool and was not raining. Thankfully we were able to get lots of outside work done. Monty and Kenyon worked together on the front yard. We have several bushes in front of the house that are unruly and just plain ugly. Not being trimmed at all during the winter meant that you could no longer see the windows on the front of our house. I was expecting them to be trimmed but the guys decided to just chop most of them out completely.

The roots are very deep and will take a lot to get them out but at least for now the ugly is gone.

Kenyon's job was piling the limbs near the curb so we could get ready for bulk trash pick up day. Of course the mind of a 12 year old boy looking upon a pile of cut limbs makes ya start to think...."Wonder if I could take my bike...."

"Yep! It works." A pile of limbs makes a great obstacle to drive through. Kenyon would drag more limbs to the pile then take a few runs through the middle of it then pile on some more and try again. We should learn from the kids and continue to try to make our own mundane work a little more fun.
While the guys were in the front yard, the girls and I were working on a garden. We tried a garden a couple of years ago but it was a total bust. This year we went much smaller and we started tomatoes and lettuce inside to get them going.

We had a 10X10 plot tilled and I decided to take measures to prevent the weeds from taking over. The girls helped me roll out the weed control stuff(not really sure what it is called). I then just cut holes at the spot I wanted to plant something and dug the hole. The girls helped transplant our tomato and lettuce plants and then spread mulch. Just like their brother, they were continually looking for ways to make the work more fun. They kept telling me "boy, planting a garden is really hard work!" I am not sure what part they thought was the hard part. Maybe it was burying the seed(packet and all) and then digging for the buried treasure(and not finding some of them for a few hours!); or maybe it was sifting the dirt through their fingers "looking for grass" even though it appeared to me more like throwing dirt; maybe the hard part was trying to jump over the mulched part and landing in the dirt; then again maybe it was just hard on them because I kept taking the little shovel to actually plant a seed while they were trying to dig their own holes for other reasons.

Nevertheless, we got about 1/2 the garden finished and have tomatoes, lettuce, okra and squash. It was a productive weekend day and we all had a little fun . Of course one of the best parts for the kids was....

playing in the dirt with mom. And then of course the fun of...

the clean up.

All the rain that we have had means I have not even had to water but our garden is doing great. A little over a week after the planting...

we have sprouts! The okra and squash are both coming up and the lettuce and tomatoes are doing well in their new home.

So far the weed control stuff is working great as well. I have high hopes for our little garden this year. I guess I can't call it our first garden but hopefully we will be able to have a first harvest.