Spring Time Activities with Geoff and Gillian

My dad and I have done a couple spring-like things around the house the last couple weekends.

Last Sunday I deemed 'Gardening Day' so we set out to spruce up the backyard. My dog has effectively killed most of the grass by running and peeing which may be slowly driving my dad crazy. I, however, am more concerned with making a 'flower garden' which is rapidly evolving into a 'vegetable garden'.

'Gardening Day' went something like this:

Step One: Pick up 5ish months of dog poo. My dog is something special. He, unlike most dogs, is VERY private about going to the bathroom. He only pees in grass if no one else is around (and that took about 2 years...he use to only go under trees and in bushes) and he only poops in VERY out of the way places. My dads backyard is extremely small because of the whole city-ish thing. The main part is probably about 12x 30' and then there is a part that runs parallel to the house (since his house is so much longer than the one on the other side) that is about 4x 25'. My dog goes all the way down to the very back part of the run beside the house and poops. Every day. There are piles of dog poo back there...must be nice for the neighbors to open their windows back there...hehe. Anyway, it makes cleanup very easy. No hunting for poop piles just walk back there and start scooping!

Step Two: Go to store for plants! We wandered around for about a half hour and left with this:
-Strawberries
-4 different kinda of herbs
-a shovel
-gloves for me
-a fence to keep Phillip out of my new garden (and bunnies and such)

Step Three: Plant! I cleared out a little space for my new stuff and planted it. My dad dug out the base of a tree that had fallen down last winter. It probably took about an hour for each of us to do our respective activities. When we were done I assumed we would keep working on the rest of the yard which has various plants and beds that need to be weeded and such but when I turned around dad said "well, that's good enough for today!" Which is exactly what I was thinking but I didn't think I'd get out that easy. This is why dad and I get along so well.

Sidenote: we still haven't gone back to finish the yard nor have we made any plans to.



Another spring activity we set out to do was open the windows. This may sound like a simple task to most, but in an old house which had parts that were relatively uninhabited until I got here, it is not so easy. The room I have taken and now call MINE has 2 windows. One does not open. Period. The other opens, but from both ends. So if you try to open the bottom and put in a screen (yes you have to add the screen to prop up the window) then the top window falls down to the bottom and you have an open window from the top. I won't bore you with all the specifics but I will say the final open window product involved about a hour of labor, cardboard, and packing tape.



That's about as far as we've come with our spring activities though I'm sure there will be more!