Round up the Usual Suspects

Before and After

Today, we finally mowed the lawn with our new lawnmower.

Here is the before shot:

The first step was to move all the fallen tree branches off the lawn.  Here, my lovely assistant and spokesmodel demonstrates step one:

After that, my spokesmodel suddenly turned into a caveman who would not even hear of me mowing the lawn - not even part of it.  He did the whole thing himself, while I went around the edges and trimmed the long pieces of grass that the lawnmower missed.  Apparently, the space-time continuum temporarily turned in on itself and I ended up in 1955 for a full 45 minutes.

Now the after shot:

Ahhh . . . it looks just the way I feel after a new haircut

Wait a minute ... who is that in the distance, peering out the front, left window?

Let us approach ... stealthily ...

Hi - my name is Emma - I spend lots of time gazing wistfully out the window

Side note: This morning, Emma, who tends to be a little stand-offish to me, abandoned her usual post next to the MOTH and snuggled up to me - I consider it a Mother's Day gift.

The good thing about finally mowing, is that there were lots of grass clippings to add to Geoffrey the Geobin composter:

Yum! Tasty grass clippings for Geoffrey!

Also, I'm sure our neighbors are very happy that our eyesore of lawn is finally under control.

My Embarrassing Backyard

I live in a lovely new house, but my backyard is a disaster.  When we bought it last July, it had a blanket of green lawn, which promptly died after we moved in due, in part, to the shade caused by several large trees.  Not only that, as I've mentioned before, I never raked up the leaves from last fall.

Leaf-covered corner of my backyard

Plus there are several large "trees" that may have started their lives in my neighbor's backyard, but appear to have broken through the border and possibly even have propagated in my yard.  They have long branches that worm their way around the other trees in my yard and are covered in green leaves.  I'm starting to wonder if they are really just enormous weeds and not actually trees at all.  They are kind of ugly.

Green monstrosity

I finally started the process of raking the yard last week, using the leaves to start my new compost bin.  Today I spent several hours raking the rest of the rest of the leaves, but with my compost bin completely full,

Geoffrey, the Geobin - completely full

I left the leaves sitting in random piles around the yard.

No, those are not dead bodies buried all over my yard

I'm too tired to deal with them, so I will probably just bag them tomorrow.  The MOTH has promised to help, but now he's not "feeling well" so I may be on my own again.  Poor Pookums.

I also started to "prune" some of the trees/weeds/stuff at the back border of the yard, because it has grown so dense, it's basically just a mess back there.  I don't know if I should be "pruning" these plants or if they're thinking - "Hey, Idiot! What the heck are you doing? You're not supposed to be chopping my branches off!  Will you please go read a blog entry on pruning!"

After cutting back some of the mess

After today's foray, I'm even more convinced I should hire a landscape designer to help me with a cohesive plan for the front and back yards.  Even though my yard is pretty small, it is just too overwhelming to handle this by myself, particularly when half the time, I can't tell the difference between a plant and a weed.

Here are some more shots of the hideous backyard.  Don't you love the randomness of the neighbors' ugly fences juxtaposed against each other:

Geoffrey's view of the backyard

Another angle - I know, horrible.

Fortunately, I came back inside to this snuggle-fest:

Emma and Ghost

Sorry, didn't mean to disturb you - as you were

 So, that makes everything okay.