Side-by-Side

Sidenote: Sorry for the lack of posts around here this week. I have just been a little too busy and feeling a bit uninspired. I promise, next week I will be back into the swing of things! 

Wanna take this outside? 

No, no. I'm not going to beat you up, but I would like to show you something that Jonathan and I worked on last weekend. 

In the five months that we have owned this house, we have not touched a single thing on the outside. Well, unless you consider "revamping" the stairs. But, we really shouldn't count that. Needless to say, the outside of our house is still looking a bit neglected.

The gardens are completely overgrown, there is a huge-almost-as-tall-as-me-huge pile of sticks next to our garage, and don't even get me started about the state of the shrubbery. I may just cry. 

But things changed a bit last Friday. Jonathan surprised me by coming home, from work, early!--this rarely happens.  His first words were, "What do you need help with."

Yes, I have the best husband. 

No, you can't have him. 

Yes, I have bewitched him to think that I'm the best wife in the world. 

No, I'm not proud of that. :)

Anyways, I honestly didn't have much for him to help me with, so I told him to go ahead and spend the rest of the afternoon doing what he wanted to. So what did he decide to do? Well only something full of manly-ness of course. 

He decided to clear out the area in front of our garage. 

At the time, a small tree and two clothesline posts were occupying the space. I loved the idea of having a place to hang my clothes and the tree was pretty, but they were in a horrible spot. With a large truck, a trailer, and my car all needing to be parked in that area, things were getting pretty tight. Plus, it isn't very fun to back out onto our road because it is narrow and we live just up from a bend--so you can't see a car coming until it is on your tail. All that to say, a bit of extra space would be much appreciated.

We are also planning on re-graveling the driveway this summer. In preparation for that, Jonathan and I wanted to rip out the horribly placed greenery and poles so that we could gravel right to the doors of our garage. We will call this 'step one' of  'operation improve driveway.'

First, Jonathan dug out the pole closest to the tree. The poles were embedded with cement, but we decided to attempt to save them. Buying new poles would have been pretty expensive, so Jonathan just dug around the cement and we wiggled it free. We decided to store them behind the garage until we can figure out a better place for them.

Then came tree-time. Jonathan was all excited about this part. First, he dug around the tree a bit to loosen things up. Then, he attached her to his truck.

Pulling out tree with truck = man adrenaline rush. Or just something fun to do on a Friday afternoon. Needless to say, she came out with no problem. I have to say, there was a moment of panic, when I thought that he was going to pull the tree into my car, but I didn't need to worry. He knew what he was doing. :)

After that whole ordeal, we cut her into pieces and added her to the pile-o-sticks beside our garage.

Finally, it was time for the last pole. This one was a little trickier. There were tons of roots around the cement so it wasn't as easy to dig around it. Jonathan tried to pull it out with his truck--that didn't work. We tried to lift it by grabbing onto it and pulling together--that didn't work. Finally, our nice neighbor came over and between him and Jonathan they were able to wiggle it free and pull it out of the hole. She too was then laid-to-temporary-rest behind the garage.

Now, the area behind our house and in front of our garage is looking pretty spiffy. There are a few holes that we need to fill, but we can at least park our cars side-by-side. Plus, the whole backing-out-of-the-driveway-thing has been remedied. Now, there is plenty of space for both of us to turn around first.

In short: we love it. 

Now, we have to come up with an answer to a way more complicated question: Where to place the clothes line?