First Fall Cleanup

It was not something I planned on doing today, but my first Fall cleanup happened.😉

I was packing some Goodwill donations into our SUV (yeah, we had enough to fill the cargo area), when my toddler picked a leaf up off of the bumper and carried it to the front lawn to put it with the other leaves. It was adorable, but it drew my attention to the fact the lawn was looking a mess!

My bagging lawnmower was AWESOME! It acted like a vacuum. The lawn needed a mowing anyway, so it did double duty.☺ I did have to empty the bag several times, but the lawn looked great. Unfortunately the leaves are still dropping, and it will probably look like I did nothing by tomorrow morning.

Projects, projects, projects…..

It has been starting to get busy here, now that Spring has arrived. We have Fall cleanup that still needs to get finished, but so many new exciting projects to get working on too. This year we have decided to rip out our raised beds for vegetable planting, and turn that area into a place for a swimming pool. The pool has been purchased, a sand filter and salt water system are on the way, and a ton of fencing materials will be here Tuesday. My husband has also wanted to put a “real” fish pond on our property for a while too, so that will be done too. We currently have a very small plastic pond that you just dig a hole and place in the ground. It isn’t deep enough for fish to survive in the winter, so we are looking to upgrade.

The vegetable beds are dismantled, and most of the dirt has been spread back over the original area, but now we need to level the ground for the pool. The reviews on the pool we purchased said level ground was very important, and since we have had a pool in the past we know that’s probably true no matter what pool you get. 😉 We had a round pool in the area years ago, but we have decided to go with a rectangle this time. It should make fencing in the area easier…we hope. We have some worry about roots and rocks getting in the way of the fence posts, but hopefully we don’t run into any major issues that cause us to scrap our plans. We never fenced in our round pool, so besides the few stumps we can clearly see we don’t know for sure what we’re dealing with. Tree roots can spread as far out as the tree tops. Even though the area is pretty open there are trees all around it.

We…I mean my husband has already finished some projects this Spring. He built a new house for some of our outdoor pets, and re-purposed an existing enclosure to house our Flemish Giant rabbits. We had a rather large outdoor hutch for our two giants, but when you have such large animals they make even a large hutch seem small. They have lots of room to move now, and eventually will have an addition made to that enclosure after we get our pool project finished. Owning a home, having children and having pets means the work is never done. 😉

We have a few home improvement projects that need to be done this year too. One of them being building a bedroom for the baby. Our home was originally a 3 bedroom, but the previous owner took down a wall to make the master bedroom larger, now we have to put it back up. We actually want to put the wall up a bit differently to use the space better, so it’s not just as simple as it could have been.

I am still recovering from shoulder surgery, but I am happy to be able to help with some of the work around here. My surgery was 11/26/14, but the healing is slow. The shoulder heals about 10% per month, and it could take a full year to get my full range of motion back. Thankfully the pain is not excruciating, but it can be annoying at times.

I wish we had a magic wand to wave and make all of our projects be completed. I am ready to enjoy the finished product before the project even starts.