It's hard out here for a hoe

I am apparently bad at counting. Today's post is actually #99 on this blog, not #102 or whatever I thought it would be. My downfall was believing Blogger when they told me how many posts I had . . . the problem is, they also count "Draft" posts, of things I saved in progress and returned to later to publish. Whoops. Okay, so big celebration tomorrow. Or, you know, not.

I spent about 3 hours of this lovely day doing yard work. I started with digging, and got a bit more of my impending garden excavated:


The little sticky-out part is what's newly dug. Unfortunately, as I was working on that section my right knee started to hurt. Since that is the leg that I primarily use to push the shovel through the sod, I decided further exacerbation might be risky and instead moved on to hoeing.

This was a necessary step as the roots in the upturned grass are extremely dense and intertwined. My aim was to try and get as much of the roots as broken up as possible before I put any seeds or seedlings in, but it was back-breaking (hopefully not literally) work.


I made a bit of progress, but not as much as I would have hoped before it wore me out.

However, there were still a couple good hours of daylight (and several unlistened-to NPR podcasts) to be had . . . not to mention, it was too nice a day not to find an excuse to be outside!



So, I spent the next 90 minutes or so picking up sticks and pinecones from around the yard. Not rocket surgery, but necessary if John is going to come and mow over the weekend. I didn't get all the sticks yet (I'm hoping the weather holds out for a bit tomorrow afternoon), but I made a pretty good dent in the pinecones. Anyone have any interesting craft ideas?


Well, I'm off now to pick up Chad for Nerts and NFG. Hope the weather was nice by you today and that you made it outside, too!