Over the last two weeks I’ve managed to get a lot of yard work done. You can’t really tell when you drive by the house, but my muscles sure are feeling it! I’ve taken down another fence, planted some flowers, and cleaned out my vegetable plots. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but when everything was over run and nothing was cared for in several years, there’s a lot to do. Especially when you’re doing it all by yourself and, technically, you’re allergic to everything that you’re in up to your elbows.

In this picture you can see the chicken wire fence that was placed at the end of the driveway. It was in between two different chain link fences and at one time was used for when my grandmother let her dog outside. I hated this fence because to me it was senseless. It just took up room and became one more thing to mow around and deal with. So out it came…

Besides the fact that the grass is greener, doesn’t this look a lot better? You can see the edge of the driveway and there’s nothing until the chain link fence that will actually stay. I pulled out all of those posts by myself, which was not an easy task! My back is still sore. Those posts just did NOT want to come out. However, they didn’t realize just how stubborn I can be! lol

Here is the flower garden that runs alongside of my house. This was after I did a lot of ripping and tearing out of there. There is a climbing rose bush by the rhododendron, but I haven’t yet been able to get my climbing rose supports that my dad made for me.

Since the last picture I’ve done even more ripping and tearing, plus some soil turning. I pulled the posts out of the garden (again, they didn’t want to budge!), and tonight I planted some flowers. I was trying to find some pansies, but because they get along better in colder weather the ones that I did manage to find didn’t look so good. So I had to change my mind on what I wanted to plant.

I needed at least a couple of pansies in my garden, though, so I bought these ones. I don’t know if they are going to flourish or not. They like a LOT of sun and this side of the house only gets a few hours in the mid-afternoon. The neighbor has these trees that border my property and they cast shade over half of my lawn. Nothing grows over there except mosquitoes and bugs. 😦

I considered planting some impatiens because they like partial sun so they would do great in this spot. However, I just am not an impatiens person. Impatient, yes. Impatiens, no. lol. Then I saw these begonias. Technically they like a lot of sun, but I figured that I would give them a shot. They were too pretty to pass by. You can’t see them very well, but there are some really interesting shades of pink and white mixed in there. Once they grow and fill out a little more they should be gorgeous. I hope.

I wanted to show off my miniature rose bush. It was one that my grandmother had planted years ago. She and I both shared a love for roses so I’m very happy that quite a few of her rose bushes are still around. I planted a couple of begonias at the base of this one, too.

Here are the blooms on my climbing rose bush. I had to hold the cane out so that I could take a picture because it sits nestled in the rhododendron bush most of the day. Once I get my support from my parents’ house I will be able to train it onto that and it should be gorgeous. The rose bushes are one of the few things that I actually like about this house.

So that’s all the work that I’ve managed to get done in the past two weeks. I’m hoping in the next two weeks to get my vegetable gardens going (finally!) and get that second chain link fence down. It’s kind of hard doing it all by myself, but I’m slowly making headway. I still need to power wash my deck and restain that as well. Oh, and if anybody knows of a good way to get rid of ant hills, please let me know! It seems that half of my backyard is one giant ant hill. *sigh*