Attack of the Five-Foot-Tall Weeds

Yesterday was a cool morning, so I decided to tackle the weeds in our front/side yard. We had gotten a notice about them last week. I hardly ever go on that side of the house, so I hadn't noticed how bad they were. Some of them were seriously about as tall as I am. I also pulled out some things that had died and some baby palm trees that had decided to start growing on their own. Some of these put up quite a struggle. A couple of the really big weeds had roots at least as big around as my thumb. I ended up having to saturate the ground with water and then dig out the roots. After filling by trash bin with weeds and such, I came to the conclusion that I need a yard trimmings cart. The park handles all our trash service so I spoke to them about getting one. I should have had one already, but apparently somebody took it.

Unfortunately, the yard is planted entirely in succulents with a few actual cacti thrown in. The stupid plants kept stabbing me while I was pulling weeds. I've got scrapes all over my arms. I do plan to rip the plants out and put in something that actually looks nice, but I have to come up with a plan and present it to the park for approval first. Luckily, they are not likely to object to the removal of the existing plants. And yes, I had already planned to remove them before I was attacked by them.

The kids and I had picked up some plants at OSH last week and we finallly got around to potting them yesterday after I pulled out the weeds. They are mostly in front of the house now and I think they look nice.

I'm making progress on the house. I can actually sit on both couches and my rocking chair now. The dishwasher repair man is supposed to come fix our built in dishwasher today. It has taken much too long getting this fixed by Sears. Next time I'll get an actual GE repairman for my GE appliances. They actually have the parts on hand. The dishwasher was already broken when we bought the house and we got a credit from the seller to pay for the repair. In the mean time, we're still using my portable dishwasher from the apartment. I want to sell it, though, so I'm in a hurry to get the built-in working. The only appliance left that we need to buy is a dryer and my dad just found a used one at a flea market sale for $30. I figured it would be hard to go wrong for that price, so hopefully we'll have a working dryer by the end of the day. Woo Hoo! That'll make the mountains of laundry much easier to deal with.

I managed to find the camera this morning, so I'll be able to post pictures soon, just as soon as I get things straightened up a bit more.