Ouch, My Aching Bones.

we've been busy, busy, busy outside lately. the summer heat seems to be definitely behind us and the cooler weather has made darin restless and eager to get various projects underway.

he pretty much single handedly built another raised veggie bed out of cedar planks (i held a few boards for him). it is now full of partly done compost with a few bags of dirt mixed in and a thick layer of chopped leaves and grass clippings. a few weeks of "resting" and it will be ready for fall / winter crops (to be named later).

myself, i raked the whole front yard and then "vacuumed" the leaves with the toro leaf blower / chopper. and i cleaned out the driveway bed. still lots of fall cleanup to do -- clean up the beds in front of the house, add mulch to all beds, keep up with leaf raking / chopping.

oh, and we (again, mostly darin) have started a raised bed across the back of the backyard. we have differing ideas of what will ultimately go there, but whatever it is it will be an improvement over the sad st. augustine.

almost forgot the biggest project -- we took out two (smallish) trees in the backyard. the carolina cherry laurel and the white mulberry are history. the cherry laurel wasn't such a bad tree, but it was in a very bad place -- right against the back fence and directly under the power lines. while it wasn't up to the lines yet, it would have eventually grown into them and the power company would have come in and given it an ugly flat-top. it had very nice flowers in the spring, but then we spent the next six months pulling seedlings. the backyard neighbors were happy to see it go, too, since it also dropped seedlings all over their yard. the mulberry was just an ugly, trashy looking tree and i was very happy to have it finally gone.

now there is a fair bit more sun in the backyard, offering many new planting possibilities.