Beautiful days = yard work

In celebration of nice weather, I got to spend the bulk of the day outside. It has been so perfect out today! I finally dug out all of the red lava rock from the back of the house, which I'll be replacing with mulch; I cleaned and organized the garage; I completed the border around the bed against the garage; and mowed the yard. Busy day, and very rewarding.

I put out the freshly painted rain barrel the other day. It looks so much better! I'm really looking forward to seeing how well the new compost bin works too. I basically have it full already.

All the plants are doing really well, except for those in the native bed I planted next to the deck. They started coming up before the frost, then died and are now barely starting to come back up again. I'm excited for the bee balm again and I'm anxious to see if the butterfly weed and coneflower have any flowers this year.

Here are some of the latest pictures, including one of Banjo playing with Duckie (that damn duck!):

Spring projects

Even though it feels like the day went by in a blur, I actually feel like I've accomplished something. This is fantastic news for me since I was sick for about a week-and-a-half. I was completely drained of energy and got tired walking around my house. Luckily work was a little bit slower than it has been the past couple of months, so I was able to scrap by.

Today I played with spray paint. This is my first attempt at using it and I am even more impressed with those that create the graffiti works of art (not so much for those that just tag stuff). I am painting the re-purposed Smurf-blue rain barrel I bought/made last year beige. I think the neighbors will be pleased since they had to look at it through their patio window all summer. The first coat is on and looking much more neutral.

The other exciting thing was we picked up a compost bin. We've had one made out of a metal trash can for 2-3 years now, but I failed to think of how I would not only turn the compost at the bottom of the bin, but how I would get compost out of it. I'm super excited about this new compost bin because it's much larger, has an open bottom and it has a slot at the bottom to turn over the compost and to scoop out the finished compost.

It's been really fun seeing all the plants coming up. The day lilies in back are really tall now, as are the columbine I planted last spring. The lilacs have buds all over and the lilies of the valley are finally starting to poke up. The rhubarb out front is growing a lot and the hostas are starting to peak up out of the ground. I'm hoping the nice weather sticks around a while.

Hello muscles I haven't used all winter

I did the bulk of the spring clean-up yesterday in anticipation of the crazy thunderstorm that I slept through last night. I left quite a few leaves on the ground before the first snow last year out of laziness and lots of leaves in the flower beds out of planning, which meant I had plenty to clean up. Last year, I cleared out the flower beds too late - everything was a few inches tall which meant I had to be extra careful not to rip out the fragile plants.

Given all the bending over, picking leaves up, raking, hauling, etc, my muscles decided to revolt this morning. I groaned getting out of bed. The back of my legs are killing me and I'm walking like a zombie (luckily I don't have the urge to eat brains). I've been taking Ibuprofen, stretching, and had Chris make me a protein shake in order to start combating the soreness. I'm really nervous for tomorrow morning (it's always worse the second day for me at least).

All the pain is totally worth it. Not only is it great to uncover all the little plants that are growing like mad, I am getting inspired about all the garden plans I thought I was going to work on over the winter. Good weekend!

Spring arrives!

I am so excited! Banjo and I went for a long walk today, and afterward, I chased him around the yard a bit. While playing, I noticed some green starting to appear: the day lilies are starting to come up! Then I looked a bit closer and noticed the honeysuckle are starting to come up too! After that, I started noticing little plants all over the place!

The funny thing is there is still some snow in the backyard (where the sun doesn't hit). It's looking out of place though, which brightens my day :) I'm planning on starting the spring clean-up this weekend. There's plenty to do because it seems to me I got a bit lazy with raking towards the end of fall last year, so there are plenty of leaves to rake up. I'm most excited about uncovering the flower beds! Banjo's excited about everything - he loves the warmer weather. He started just sitting outside for the fun of it.

Ecstatic for spring

I am getting more and more anxious to get working out in the yard. The bulk of the snow is now gone, which is fantastic, but I have been ready to start working on the yard for the past month. Come on spring!

In the meantime, I've been knitting lots of baby stuff. I just finished a baby blanket for my friend/coworker. I didn't expect it to be so large and of course it took me almost a month to knit. I put the finishing touches on last night, and her baby shower is this morning. Cutting it a bit close, I know.

Now that I have that done, I have to finish Chris's socks that I started way back when. I am ready for a small break from knitting though. I really want to work on the yard!

Emotional journey

After Chris and I got married last June, I decided I wanted to learn to let go of the various emotional barriers I've built throughout my life. I wanted to fully embrace being a woman, which meant fully accepting my body and my emotions. When I was in high school, I wanted nothing more than to be accepted as "one of the guys." I suppressed a lot of those "girly" feelings teenager girls/young women tend to have. For quite a while, including throughout college, I pretended not to be affected by the difficult or emotionally painful things that happened. I wanted to be strong, but it turns out I didn't understand the definition of strong. What I ended up doing was building a number of emotional walls in order to prevent any pain reaching me. In some cases, I buried the pain so deep that it's taken until now to fully surface it and work through it. This contributed to my bad habit of having good friends for a while and losing touch very quickly afterward - it was a way to forget, to not be reminded of whatever emotional event happened. I found myself doing this even in grad school, pushing away a close friend because being around her reminded me of things that happened in our broader circle of friends.

I knew I didn't want to continue to this pattern. I wanted to build life-long friendships, to grow together. This is something Chris has taught me. When Chris and I started dating, I realized it was ok to be who I really was, that what happened in my past doesn't dictate what happens in my present and future. I learned I can grow from these experiences rather that continuing to hide behind these walls. Sounds easy, but I'm still working it.

In order to continue my journey, I got the book Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom by Christiane Northrup. She walks through creating physical and emotional health from the feminine perspective. Her writing felt like a guide for me to find my own path. A lot of what she wrote spoke to me on a very deep level. It's been a similar experience to when I was visiting a counselor in undergrad, only this time, it has left me feeling more connected not just to myself, but to the female experience. I just finished the book this morning and feel inspired by all of the women who've worked through their own walls and experiences.

How to take care of succulents

Hello to all who took home one of the centerpieces from our wedding! I have received a number of questions from you about how to take care of succulents. I honestly had no bloody clue - this was the first time I'd ever had succulents! One thing that's happened to at least a couple of people that I know of is the plant grew really tall with the leaves spaced far apart and has now fallen over. Case in point:

What to do??? I started researching online. Apparently the reason the plant does this is because it's not getting enough light (hard to believe in a place like Minnesota). This is your opportunity to create more plants! I found a great how-to guide on Instructables.com with pictures on how to create more plants and what the plants will look like. I've already created a plant from a leaf off my succulent, which was really cool to see it grow. One thing I did differently: I stuck the leaf in dirt soon after breaking it off the original plant instead of drying it out for three days. It took a while to start growing because of the low winter light, but it was really fun to see it grow!

One other important tip that I just learned: if your succulents leaves are turning yellow and drying up, try watering it less. I thought before that that's just what these plants did, but I was apparently wrong and am guilty of this too. To show you how little water these plants need, I only watered my hens and chicks twice this entire winter!

Good luck and let me know how things are growing!