Yardwork and house work (plus pictures!)

It's been a fairly productive day all around, by everybody :-) I got an area of the front yard mowed, and the entire back yard. Our DD (dear daughter) has washed, hung, folded, and put away two loads of laundry, plus she has emptied & refilled the dishwasher, ran it, has since emptied it again, and has vacuumed. And she did all that without us even asking her. Cool, huh? :-)

The main reason I mowed the back yard was because Rain (dear wife) is going to plant some corn seeds, then once they've came up and grown to about a foot or so high, will plant beans next to the stocks, then she plans on planting some other plant to go with those two things. See, what we're doing by creating a corn/bean/other garden is 3-fold.

1. Use more of our 10 acres.
2. Have corn for us AND the chickens because the price of corn is up, and will probably go up more once the Ethanol plants are built and up & running.
3. Make it so there is less grass to mow, thus saving money on gas, and helping Mother Earth by not using as much petroleum-based/fossil fuel.

I also mowed the grass short in another, smaller area of the back yard because we're planning on building a fire pit. There is a Poplar tree right next to the area we're going to use that will be cut down and turned into a bench (by trimming all the branches off, pealing the bark off using a chisel/screwdriver, and then cutting the top surface flat with the chainsaw). Plus I have to make another bench out of the other Poplar tree I cut down last week, and put it by the fire pit.

We're also planning on getting as much free exterior paint as we can find to paint the outside of the house in all kinds of different colors. Rain calls what we want to do to/with the colors "hippie-ing-up" the place. *smile*

What we're doing by planning on all the aforementioned work is make this place "our own", and also a full-fledged "home". If we end up living here longer than we plan (still want to sell and move closer to one of our family-friends), then we want a place we feel is *truly* ours. Besides, maybe after all the improvements, it'll be more "buyable" when we do want to put it back on the Real estate market. *smile*

Some people say that it's not *really* a blog unless there are pictures, so here is a couple for you to look at. *grin*

I took this picture because he looked dead, but honest, he's not really! :-)

These are the Gnomes that we got when our grandmother left for New Mexico. She and her husband that passed away several years ago, made these from molds and painted them. Grandma will be 99 years old on her next birthday, so you might say we've got some "living history" right here in our home. *smile*

Technorati : Poplar tree, back yard, fire pit, front yard, gnome, gnomes, history, living, yardwork