It has been a cold winter here in Chi-town, but things have been warming up quite a bit the past few days. The snow that has been on the ground since the end of December is finally starting to melt. The giant, and quite impressive snow fort down the block has melted to a foot high ring. As a child who grew up in Texas, where on the few occasions it snowed you were happy to be able to gather all of the snow up in the yard into one basketball sized half grass half snow-ball, I was particularly amazed by this 5 foot high fort with foot inch thick walls all the way around. I am sad to see it go, although the relief I feel at finally having a break from the bitter cold, is tempered by the fact that the snow that is remaining is over a month old, and thus disgustingly dirty. It has also revealed a ton of trash that has been hidden behind snow banks for the past month, and is now littering the streets. Our back yard in particular is no exception.
For the past month we had been able to delude ourselves into thinking that it was not that bad. We had forgotten about all of the construction debri that was hidden underneath. The yard is now slowly being revealed as things slowly warm up, and all of the garbage is starting to come to light again. What a mess.
This past Sunday was likely part of the last great beautiful weekends for the year here in Chicagoland (if you ignore the Bear’s spirit crushing loss). Knowing we had better enjoy it while we can, after Thor woke up at noon after working all night, we had an awsome brunch at a place with a beautiful outdoor patio, and then I got to work out in the garage on our bedroom door – more about that later, probably when I finish up on Tuesday (I hope). Meanwhile Thor took a nap and watched the game.
Once nap time was over we were able to get to work on my real goal for the weekend, which was to start to clear out the pine bushes from the yard, particularly the front. As you may know, I’ve had my eye on that bush from the very beginning, and this weekend it’s time had finally come. I want to get the front ready so that come spring I can just go out there and plant, and I am not trying to dig up bushes and rocks in the cold and half-frozen ground.
Thor set about sawizawing the giant bush down while I started picking up the white rocks. Yes, those white landscaping rocks were basically covering the entire front planting bed underneath the bush. I am cursed, they seem to follow me everywhere. I spent about 2 years getting rid of them from the Rice Street house, and now they have found me again. There is no easy way to scoop them up, they are everywhere, make it hard to dig, and most importantly they are so very very ugly. If anyone wants some, however, just send us an e-mail. I have about 8 buckets for you. Thor is annoyed because it has just created more trash for us to start trying to get rid of. In the end I created a make-shift sieve using a doormat hung across two buckets to try and shovel out the rocks from the dirt. It did a pretty good job, but was also more time consuming. Once it started to get dark out I just gave up, and there is definitely at least 3 buckets worth left in the planting bed still. (more…)
Back yard mess
We went back to the house today after the vacation and the 48 hour waiting period for the floors to dry. The yard was just as bad as I remember. I don’t know how much longer the neighbors will put up with it. We were so excited to see the new floor with out the water stains and the holes filled in. We arrived only to find that Matt had taken the key home with him after he had stopped by to take some more measurements!!
We had frustratingly locked all the windows and were unable to break in. I suppose we should be comforted by this fact. At one point Thor contemplated cutting one of the screens, he wanted to see the floors so badly, but was talked out of it. I was then accused (for the first time in my life) of being too optimistic because I pointed out we can just wait until tomorrow to get in. (more…)
