Wednesday, March 21, 2012
He found the art table
Remember my post about the Art Table? We're going to have to stop calling it "Ella's Art Table" and start putting away the glue, the scissors, and basically everything else she finds fun about it these days because her little bro has found the art table. He makes a beeline for it whenever he can. So far his favorite thing is the crayons but that's only because we haven't let him at the playdoh yet.
Mulch mountain
Time versus money is a conversation we have a lot lately. Some things that we used to do ourselves (clean the house, mow the lawn, weed the garden) seem better left to the professionals these days. In that spirit, I asked our gardener for a quote to spread mulch over all of our gardens. Now before you think we are really big wimps - I mean, who can't spread out a few bags of mulch? - you need to know that we have really really big gardens. We bought our house from a couple who had invested a great deal of time, money, and true love of plants in our yard. Did I mention that their children were grown and long gone from the nest? Enter us, moving in with a three-month old and proceeding to spend the next three years finishing a PhD, building a business career, and having another baby. Guess how much time was left for gardening? After a few years of getting by with some minor weeding, we realized that our beautiful yard was getting away from us and that we needed to get some help in taming the wild. I should say that my own mother is the most expert of garden experts and routinely spends the children's nap times saving plants from certain death due to our ignore-it-all gardening strategy, planting vegetable patches, and generally just making things look and grow so much nicer. But our garden would be a full-time job for her, and she already has her own lovely gardens to work in. Enter F, our gardener, who has indeed helped us immensely in getting the gardens back under control and back to being a place we like to be.
So I asked F for a quote to mulch all of the gardens which needed to be done desperately and he gave us a bid that while reasonable, was just a lot of money, understandably since he estimated that he and his crew had to spread mulch on 2000 square feet of gardens.
I thought this mighty sum was mighty worth it for us to spend the weekends with the kids rather than taking our tiny pick-up truck to the mulch store ten times and unloading it. But Josh decided it was a mighty sum he'd rather put in the bank and, gosh, wouldn't it be nice to work outside in the yard in this lovely spring weather? I agreed that we'd try to do the project ourselves this year and if it was a total disaster, we'd hire it out next year. And thus, two Sundays in March got marked off as Family Garden Days. My parents agreed to help us (and by help, it turns out, they meant supply most of the knowledge, do most of the work, and be much more cheerful about this enormous task than I could ever be).
The biggest obstacle to the entire task, I felt, was what to do with the kids while we worked. Thankfully with my parents to help in the garden, one of us could be with the kids and the other could be in the yard. Ella, however, wanted no part of being stuck inside and instead was awfully enthusiastic about helping. She put on her rain boots, got her little rake, and loaded up mulch in her little bucket which she then loaded into the wheelbarrow. She also helped my dad get an even better workout by insisting that she ride back from each load in his wheelbarrow. Fortunately, he thought this was as much fun as she did.
So I asked F for a quote to mulch all of the gardens which needed to be done desperately and he gave us a bid that while reasonable, was just a lot of money, understandably since he estimated that he and his crew had to spread mulch on 2000 square feet of gardens.
I thought this mighty sum was mighty worth it for us to spend the weekends with the kids rather than taking our tiny pick-up truck to the mulch store ten times and unloading it. But Josh decided it was a mighty sum he'd rather put in the bank and, gosh, wouldn't it be nice to work outside in the yard in this lovely spring weather? I agreed that we'd try to do the project ourselves this year and if it was a total disaster, we'd hire it out next year. And thus, two Sundays in March got marked off as Family Garden Days. My parents agreed to help us (and by help, it turns out, they meant supply most of the knowledge, do most of the work, and be much more cheerful about this enormous task than I could ever be).
Did I mention that the mountain of mulch was HUGE?
Playing in the giant mulch pile before we got down to business.
What IS this stuff and why am I sitting in it?
The biggest obstacle to the entire task, I felt, was what to do with the kids while we worked. Thankfully with my parents to help in the garden, one of us could be with the kids and the other could be in the yard. Ella, however, wanted no part of being stuck inside and instead was awfully enthusiastic about helping. She put on her rain boots, got her little rake, and loaded up mulch in her little bucket which she then loaded into the wheelbarrow. She also helped my dad get an even better workout by insisting that she ride back from each load in his wheelbarrow. Fortunately, he thought this was as much fun as she did.
Biggie's shadow
Truly a stellar grandpa
Dash, doing his thing on the porch while we worked.
After the first scheduled day of Family Garden Fun, I'd say we got 80% of the work done. The mountain in the driveway is now just a small hill and most of the garden spaces at least have small piles of mulch in them, ready to be spread. So we're not done with the project yet but I will concede that it was less miserable and more fun than I had predicted. So money well-saved, Josh. At least til next spring.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)