V For Victory!

This past weekend was so nice that we decided to make a serious effort to get our backyard into shape. Since we bought the house a couple of years ago, we've been slowly but surely rehabilitating our yards. It's been an uphill battle because, quite frankly, the previous owners did not do much in the way of "upkeep". Which is a shame because the house has a great backyard with a lot of potential.

Before getting all dirty and sweaty, we stopped at TARGET and bought a strand of SOLAR-POWERED LIGHTS that we plan to test out in our patio. You can program the lights to come on automatically when it gets dark:



We pulled up all this ivy and found a bed buried underneath all the mess, along with a hollow tree stump. We're planning on filling in the stump with soil and then planting something interesting in it. By pulling up the ivy, weeds, and layers of dead leaves, we hope to eliminate some prime mosquito breeding ground:



DO WORK! Missy lugs a bundle of fallen branches and sticks up the side of our house to the front yard:



This is the fire pit in our backyard that we plan to dig up and replace with a VICTORY GARDEN. According to our neighbor Ben, the previous owners used to burn trash out here. The pit is filled with broken bottles, bits of plastic, and other debris. We've found busted glass pipes, spent lighters, pieces of scrap metal, and rusty nails sticking out of burnt planks of wood. It's a nasty mess and we can't wait to get it all cleaned up. Until this weekend, most of the fire pit was buried under a layer of rotting leaves and piles of sticks:





By the end of the weekend we had filled 15 large bags (11 in the back, 4 up front) with all manner of organic rubbish. The road to victory is certainly going to be a long one...