All Consuming Stuff

I'm really enjoying summer.  I can actually allow things to consume me that I normally cannot in these less structured days.

For instance, I finally finished reading this book.

 

Wow!  What a book.  If you have the chance to read it, I would highly recommend it.  It is a mere 455 pages long and it is full of amazing details about Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  Miniscule details - and lots of them!  Oh, and it also has lots of very long German names that are sort of hard to keep straight.  But, it is an incredible story that makes you think about stuff you've never thought about before.

I've also been consumed with landscaping work.

The house we bought had been the home of a couple who divorced.  Sadly, they were not the best caretakers of a house.  Then, they moved out and rented the home for a few years.  All of this resulted in neglect in several areas.   

Anyway, I have been having a blast attacking the landscaping.  Here are some before and after photos.

The 'before photo' of the patio.

The patio now.

I don't have a good 'before photo' of the north side of the house (to the left of the garage).  If you study this photo with a microscope, you could see the huge weed that was located on this side of the house. (It looks like a tall darker green bush in the distance behind the yellowy bush on the corner of the house).  Honestly, I was intentionally trying to avoid letting this side of the house be show on the photo because it was so horrible!

But, now it looks like this.

So much better!

But, it is amazing the amount of hours it has taken to get these projects done.  I am still working on the back side of the house.  

For the back side, though, there was grass growing right up to the the house for most of the length of the house.  I am performing an experiment - I am trying to kill the grass by covering it with plastic.  I have about two-thirds of the beds done, but am waiting for the plastic to kill the middle part so that I don't have to dig out the grass by hand.  Since we have lots of clay in our soil, it is HARD work to get the grass separated from the dirt/clay.  UGH!!!  How do the farmers do it?

My next project is washing windows.  I don't think they have been washed for years.  Should be fun!

As  Mark says, "Welcome to the world of home-ownership!"  Tis true, and I couldn't be happier.