Last week we planted the raspberry starts we got from Mom, Josie, and Grandma.  Thank you all so much!  Some of them are looking like they really miss home, but most of them seem to be doing okay.  Kathryn’s says they better live!

Yesterday we took advantage of a rare free Saturday to get some good work done on our yard.  For several weeks we’ve been working towards putting rocks around our mailbox.  We sprayed out the weeds, let them die, dug them out, removed some dirt, and smoothed out what remained.  Yesterday we made it to Sunroc building center and bought some ground cloth and finally the rocks.  And now it’s finally done.  We really like it.

I also took the opportunity to attack the flower garden in front of our front window.  It was full of old roots from the old tree and other long gone plants.  I basically plowed the area cleaning out the soil as I found stuff.  You can see the work in progress in the above picture.  Then I gave it a new grade and smoothed it out all nice.  It was a lot of work!  I’m grateful that we don’t have to farm by hand.  We’d all be a lot skinnier I think.  Now we just have to decide if we want to put down ground cloth and bark, or just plant stuff and deal with the weeds as they come.

After this was done, I was really tired.  As I was putting away the tools, I saw some weeds in the back yard growing in the grass and I decided to mow them really quick.  I mowed them and even put the lawn mower away, but I just couldn’t stop.  I decided I would just mow the front yard.  After that was done, I put the lawn mower away again, but I just couldn’t stop.  So I gave in and decided to mow the back yard too.  I was just about exhausted when Kathryn came out to check on me, and she helped push me for the last couple of rounds.  Such a sweetheart!

To top off all the outside stuff accomplished, Kathryn attacked the mountainous pile of laundry that had accumulated and cleaned the house.  Then after dinner we made a double batch of strawberry jam and watched a movie!  Just a very great day.  Thanks Kathryn for being so amazing!