Two Vrooms: Yard work date

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Yard work date

I was thrilled to be able to come home from my clinical rotation in rural Nebraska this weekend to see Jon and celebrate Easter! The hospital where I'm working is about 3 1/2 hours from Omaha, but I got a ride with another student to a different town about 2 1/2 hours from Omaha where Jon picked me up. It was complicated, and it took me 5 1/2 hours to finally be back in Omaha, but Jon only had to drive 5 hours instead of 7. What better way to celebrate eachother's company thannnnn YARD WORK!!

We started off the un-decorating by purging the premises of junk left by the previous owner.

Yes, the ugly red rug is now on the trash pile. Besides being downright ugly, it was also pretty dirty after a rainy moving weekend. Since we also inherited three other outdoor rugs with the house, we thought keeping this rug would be overkill.

Also waiting for trash pickup are a black plastic fence which had been surrounding a hole in the back yard, mardi gras beads and a shot glass found in the yard, a rotten stump previously decorating the front of the house, and grimace-worthy curtains from over the kitchen sink. Good riddance.

Our blue broom, purchased that morning from Lowe's, did a great job of cleaning up mess off the assorted cements out front. A poor planner lived here. All three surfaces are at different levels and have a different pattern going on.

Jon took the mower for it's maiden voyage in our yard. We got it off craigslist for $60 on moving day, and Jon thinks he doesn't mind that there is no auto-propel. I don't mind as long as I'm not the one pushing :)Mowing went great until about 1/3 of the way through, when the little craftsman monster died. After about 20 minutes of pull starting and muttering, the tools came out. It took one rachet and one beer to fix the sparkplug.

It might seem like I was letting Jon do all the work, but during most of this I was planting strawberries in a barrel and starting garden seeds in one of those black egg crates. I also rescued this plant before Jon mowed it over. What is it? It had bulbs when I dug it up, and the leaves felt sort of hollow like chives (but it's not chives.)

And lastly, the Stella de Oro from Grandma have all been planted in this box next to our driveway. Excuse the very non-type-A plant alignment. We hastily planted these last Sunday before Jon brought me out to my clinical rotation.