PIctures

Here are a variety of pictures that I wanted to share but haven't really fit into any of my updates:

First:  A response 

...to my friend Christy's "Ode to a Self-Portrait."  On her blog, Christy pointed out that a lot of her friends post pictures of their families on the blog but rarely get on the other side of the camera.  She challenged her blogging friends, some (me) by name, to get dolled up and get our photos taken!  So Christy, here ya go!  I realize I got carried away with PhotoBooth, but I couldn't decide which to post.

Second: Animalia 

David loves hauling Alea around.  We have a picture of Nathan holding his cat Sammy in a similar way, so we thought a parallel picture would be appropriate.  

I had  to laugh when Alea climbed up on top of the playset and then had to think really hard about how to get down again...

And I've never seen a squirrel so relaxed...

Third: David is getting so big!

Fourth: I've been Crafting!!

Fall always gives me a crafty itch that I just have to scratch.  I can't help it!  

Many moons ago I found a link to a site that has patterns to knit and crochet Chemo Caps.  Having not been especially successful crocheting hats before, I was excited to try this new pattern and learn several new stitches and techniques in the process.  I made this in August, and promised a friend on Facebook that I'd post a picture of my end result.  Ta-da!

And my next craft I finished last night after posting the "6 Quirks Tag" where I said I hate having multiple projects at once and realized I had three going.  That won't do!  So I sat down and finished this.  I must say, I'm super excited about this one.  If I weren't so young and ambitious (ha) I might have called it my magnus opus.

My friend Jennifer called me Martha Stewart when I started making this at her house Thursday night.  Not simply because I glued some silk flowers on a vine wreath, noooo... but because I made the vine wreath!  That's right.  While I was visiting my parents last weekend, I went out and harvested some of the South's most beautiful and fragrant noxious weed from their back yard--wisteria.  Then I came home and soaked the vines and wove them into a wreath, and then wrapped a (pre-made, I confess) berry garland around it and used my trusty (more like "rusty") floral design education to arrange some silk decorations on it.  I was delighted last night when Nathan genuinely complimented my work without any fishing or prodding.  

I was hoping to hang it on my front door, but alas, I cannot find a wreath hanger to fit our door, and still be able to shut the door.  I'm hoping I'll have better luck when Christmas decorations are more easily found in stores.

Conceptualizing and planning the wreath made me want to generally improve our curb appeal, so I did some quick pick-me-ups and seasonal touches:

The process of doing all that was so invigorating, and held some delightful surprises for me.  First, I was talking to my neighbor outside about cleaning up the yard a bit, and she offered to let me borrow her edger.  Nice tool!  I finished with that and then started the very tedious and back-breaking job of sweeping our driveway with a push broom.  Every  time I attempt it I wish to myself that we had a blower so I could just blow everything off the driveway.  My neighbor had some tree guys starting their own cleanup after hauling a dead tree out of her back yard, and then without saying a word, they came over with their blower and did it for me.  How nice!

Were-wood?

My friend Leah has created a new word: 

blorthy, adj.: to be blog worthy.

I've been pondering a tree in my back yard, and decided it was curious enough to be "blorthy":

Have you ever seen a dogwood look like this?  (Focus your optics on the trunk...)

Nathan came in after working in the yard and asked if I'd noticed the Werewolf tree.  He called it that because it looked like it had hair all over....

I had actually been scratching my head over it for some weeks.  When I first noticed this tree, I thought we had a poison ivy vine wrapping itself around it.  I went out to study it and see if I needed to break out the RoundUp to eradicate the nasty plant that also plagues our fence-line.  Upon closer inspection, this is what I found:

Not a poison ivy vine, but an insane number of dogwood sprouts out of the trunk!  I've seen a tree have an occasional sprout or two out of the trunk, but nothing like this, and especially not out of a dogwood...  Have you?  I think Nathan was on to something when he compared it to a werewolf.  

I therefore dub this tree: Were-wood.

A MAJOR Clean-Up Job

I'm ashamed to say that I've neglected our back yard for 7 months. That is, to say, since we moved in. Oh I ran over it once with the reel mower, but I never, ever raked, not even once during the fall. With all those pine trees and mature deciduous trees in our back yard, you can imagine the mess we had.

"Before"

To make matters worse, it was a mess when we moved in. I wasn't quite sure where the grass ended and the pinestraw bed began. We seemed to have a 4-foot wide transition zone across the yard of grass growing up through deep pinestraw. If I did rake the stuff from the grass to the beds, I wasn't sure where to end. Nathan and I decided the best thing to do would be to clean out the whole shebang. It was a very daunting job, so we talked briefly about hiring some young men to come clean it out for us to raise funds for Scout Camp. I even mentioned it to the YM President a couple weeks ago. But no one called and I got sick of looking at the mess. They say a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, or something like that, so I determined to just start plugging away at it a couple bags at a time while Daniel napped in the afternoon.

I started on Monday, and he napped long enough that I was able to surprise myself by filling twelve 39-gallon bags. Perhaps the biggest surprise about that was how little yard I actually raked to get that kind of volume! David enjoyed being out with me and really experiencing Little-Boyhood for the first time as he played in the dirt and tortured bugs. He was so filthy by the time I was finished, but I know he had fun.


Tuesday I filled four more bags in a tiny little area. Sixteen bags, and the yard was not even halfway done. By Wednesday I was exhausted and sore and decided to take a break. Plus, I'd reached our maximum number of bags I was allowed to place on the curb for pickup that week, and our back-yard neighbor had two dead pine trees taken out that day. That was pretty fun to watch.

I mentioned what I had taken on to my visiting teacher when she called on Wednesday and she offered to come help the next day (yesterday). Boy did she ever! She brought a rake, her two kids, and some sand toys. The kids all went off to a corner of the yard and played while we plugged away at the yard. I could hardly believe how fast we were filling bags. Daniel woke up before we were finished, but we were so close to being done (!) that I just put a hat on him and sat him down in some shady pseudo-grass to have a sensory fiesta while we wrapped things up.


Right towards the end we had a big surprise as Jacquie raked back a clump of pinestraw and a bunny came bounding out from under it! At first I thought we'd just put it in a box and relocate it, so I put on some leather gloves and caught the little fella. That's the first time I've ever heard a rabbit make noise. After a minute I rethought that course of action, thinking since he was so young his mom would still be around, and I didn't want to separate them. I put him back down and he took shelter behind some long greens against the garage wall. The kids were very interested in the rabbit, but I told them he was very scared and might bite. They were exceptionally good about keeping their distance in spite of their curiosity. We picked up his fluff-lined bundle of pinestraw and put it up against him there to keep him warm, then gave him an apple slice and a sprig of broccoli--just in case. I don't know much about the tendencies of wild rabbits. I hope he does okay.


After that bit of excitement we were all hot and tired, but satisfied with an afternoon well spent. We finished the entire yard, with the exception of the bunny corner, something that I had never imagined I'd accomplish in three afternoons. Thursday alone we filled 29 bags, for a grand total of 45 bags of yard debris, plus a pile of sticks. I have sworn an oath never to let the yard get that bad again! Meanwhile, I really enjoy looking out at the back yard and reveling in what got accomplished.

This is the same view as my "Before" picture. I don't know that you can see much difference in the photo, but it's a huge difference in person.


Some more views of the entire yard...



Thursday's Results: 29 bags of debris, waiting for Trash Day. I put them in the garage so when/if it rains they won't get even heavier.