Yard Work, Part 2

Ohhhh, Reader, did we accomplish some stuff in the yard last weekend.

About the time The Husband swallowed his last bite of breakfast, I informed him of my plans to steal his truck and take it to the big hardware/lumber/gardening store.  I knew he'd want to go, if for no other reason than to talk some sense into me about all the crazy ideas that would pop into my head in the store.  He had been officially put on notice not to settle down with the remote.

My Plan:  buy heavy concrete things and transport them from the truck to their intended resting places, then tackle the rest of the yard.  The problem: we are old and decrepit and shouldn't be toting heavy things, the two-wheeled dolly has two flat tires, and the wheel barrow has a broken handle.

The Husband's Plan:  fix the wheel barrow.

His Plan seemed solid to me, since it would advance My Plan to transform the yard into something worthy of a Southern Living cover photo by nightfall.

As usual, I forgot half the stuff on my list when we went to the store, which probably was a good thing for our checking account, since The Husband had a list of his own.  On his list was two new handles for the wheelbarrow.  He bought sturdy metal ones with pre-drilled holes.

We came home from the store, ate a bite of lunch, then went outside and got to work.  The heavy concrete things - a new fountain (it's very cute, two little kids kissing under an umbrella) and some large concrete pavers - had to wait until the wheel barrow was back in working order.  The Husband got right to work on that while I unloaded the water hoses, hooked them up, rolled them onto the wheel cart, took the old ones to the garbage, etc.   When I'd unloaded and put away the last thing that didn't require a wheel barrow to move it, I stepped around back to see how the Husband's project was coming.  The wheel barrow was disassembled on the patio table.  I moved on to other things.  Did some raking and some ivy-pulling.  Tightened the center connection on the arch (now lavender, you might remember).  I was hanging a big sunflower wreath on the arch when The Husband came to ask for my help with the wheelbarrow.

It turned out that the pre-drilled holes on the wheelbarrow handles did not fit the pre-drilled holes on the wheelbarrow, no matter how much we pulled and pushed and grunted.  The Husband had to drill new holes, which required a trip across the road to Pop-Pop's shop to use the drill press.  He drilled excellent holes.  When he got back with the handles, we shot the bolts right through the holes and the nuts screwed on just right.  We latched them down tight before realizing that we should have put on the front legs/brace before we put on the nuts.  Well, the nuts would not come off the bolts.  The bolt heads were round and would not be held still by a wrench or pliers; when we tried to take the nuts off, the whole bolts would just spin.  This situation necessitated a trip to the hardware store, where I bought two vise grips (hoping to somehow hold the bolts still with them), and new nuts/bolts in case we had to cut the old ones out.  Thankfully, the vise grips worked.  Heaven only knows how we would have cut those bolts out had it been necessary.  It would probably have involved a Dremel and would have resulted in some unplanned holes in the wheelbarrow.

Anyway, it was late in the afternoon by the time we unloaded the concrete.  It took us another hour to get the fountain level so that the water would flow evenly over the sweet little umbrella (and it has since settled and needs to be re-leveled).  We managed to move a heavy concrete statue - one that I already had, which had spent most of its life face-down in the dirt - before calling it a night.  Between us, we had about 19 smashed fingers after dealing with all that concrete.

Overall, I am fairly pleased with the progress we made.  Some things got accomplished that I could not have accomplished by myself.  I still have some time to do the other things before the magazine photographer arrives.  ;)

* * * * * * * *

Well, I wrote that perky little post about 9 this morning, before I put on my gardening gloves.  Here we are 12 hours later, and I am miserably stiff after having sat down to watch the final episode of Downton Abbey.  It was the first time I'd sat down for more than a minute all day.

Today, we put a serious dent in the clean-up work that needed to be done around here.

A number of years ago, we built a "utility fence," a place to hide unsightly necessities.  It wound up being a catch-all for junk.  I planted a sweet autumn clematis on the fence to help hide the mess.  Recently, the whole fence collapsed, revealing our junk in all its glory.  Something had to be done.

Observe the junk-filled trailer now hitched to my Jeep.  It holds a flat yard sweeper (tree fell on it), three rusted bicycles, a metal mesh wagon with rotted tires and a bent tongue, and sundry other metal items.  I'm taking them to be recycled in the morning.

We lopped limbs, raked leaves and sticks and sweet gum balls, battled wild rose bushes, hacked ivy.

We've a ways to go, but the place is beginning to look presentable.