The Joys of Home Ownership

Well technically I don't own the home, Bryan does, but it's our home for sure.

Owning a home is great - you can do what you want with it, you aren't just pissing money away in rent, no one can tell you how many pets you can or can't have, but it's also a lot of work.  Being springtime, a lot of that work has been out in the yard.  I've been able to get out of a bunch of it because of all the wedding projects I've been working on, but if there's one thing I couldn't make Bryan do by himself, it's weeding.

So, this past Saturday I agreed to help him out in the yard...

Image from Google Maps, enhanced by yours truly in Paint

So, yeah, that's our property.  As you can see, we have a pretty big yard, and Bryan has done an amazing job fixing up the lawn after the dogs managed to turn it into a mud pit.  But the flower beds and the entire perimeter of the pool were full of weeds.  It was BAD.  But, it isn't completely our fault it had gotten that bad considering it has basically rained every single day in 2011 (and that's only a slight exaggeration).  So Bryan got to work around the pool, and I got down and dirty in the flower beds.  I actually did this wearing a bathing suit because last year I got the most horrific tan lines while working on the flower beds and I refuse to have racer-back tan for the wedding, but that's beyond the point...look how pretty they are now (yes, I'm a horrible blogger and forgot to take "before" pictures - envision a jungle of dandelions and prickly weeds):

Personal Photo

Personal Photo

I don't even know what the purple things in the second picture are called, but we planted them last spring and they have blown up since then!  Apparently pretty purple things do well in the horrible clay like soil of Pittsburgh!  And I've already planted petunias in the empty flower bed, but I'll take pictures of that once they spread a little bit!

Have you been doing any yard work lately?