In the garden.

Friday afternoon, we did a bunch of gardening. It started with a tree branch from a eucalyptus tree that fell into the road. Sean thought it was on our property and therefore our responsibility to break down and get rid of. So we got a saw and a hatchet and Sean got to work. His work motivated me to get going on some of our weeds.

We had two simultaneous projects going on: Sean with the eucalyptus tree branch, and me with with weeds and ivy growing next to our steps.

I hate ivy. It takes over everything and while it sometimes looks nice, it is a breeding ground for rodents and bugs and all kinds of things that I'm not a fan of. My goal is to clear out about 3 feet out on either side of the stairs, so that we can plant some flowers and have it look really pretty.

The problems for me were that 1) the soil isn't so much "soil," as "hard, dry, rock solid dirt," and 2) ivy and weeds are really hearty and don't like being removed.

In the end, Sean got the tree chopped up and I got a good start on clearing the area around our steps.

The day was a huge success, with the exception of Sean discovering one of the yellow jackets nests and being stung three times. He totally "took it like a man," not even telling me about them till he was done and about to get in the shower. Me? I'd have been crying like a baby and it would have halted my entire process. But then again, I totally swell up around any and every type of sting. I guess the silver lining is that we now know where at least one of the nests are. I am totally calling an exterminator to remove it ASAP.

I'm still totally sore from all the work we did - two hours straight of pulling and digging and hacking. I cleared out about 10 feet x 2-3 feet of ivy and weeds, and am extremely proud of myself for the first manual labor I've done in years. My hand have blisters and my back and butt (no clue why) are sore. But it felt really good to get out there, to make progress. Hopefully I will be able to stick to it and finish.

Sean wants to get this special tool that makes clearing ivy really easy, and I'm all over that. Also, I will soon be investing in some better tools - the cheap ones from Target are definitely not cutting it for our hard core hillside.

And now, some photographic evidence of my toil. The top photo is the "before" photo - it's not the same area I was working on (it's actually a photo I sent to my landlady to show her that the "brush clearance" didn't really get finished), but it gives you the gist of what I was dealing with. The second photo is the finished product: I cleared out the space to the right of the stairs, and did some light weeding on the left side.


Here's hoping we stick with it get a really garden going!

P.S. A special note to Blogger: You really need to fix the "scheduling" function ASAP. I am perilously close to switching to Wordpress due to your bugs.