Yard Cleaned, Piles Gone!

Well, my birthday was this Sunday just passed & as a treat to myself, I took this week off of work to have a bit of a break, do some visiting and some general puttering around the yard, provided the weather co-operated with me and my plans.

Sunday morning I headed down to Nanaimo – birthday lunch with Mum, Dad, Grandma & Grandpa at Rob, Carrie & Finn’s house. A GORGEOUS Mummy-made chocolate cake with chocolate mint icing.  Ok, before you have a big cringe at all of that chocolate, this has been my special birthday cake since forever – I can’t remember ever having anything else as my birthday dessert.

It was AWESOME.

I spent that night down at Mum & Dad’s house and then on Monday Dad & I went to Grandma’s old apartment and did the final clean out on it – some vacuuming & general cleaning and tidying in order to release it back to the property management company.

Tuesday I came home by way of a stop in with Carrie & Finn.  My poor little nephew has a bit of a snotty nose and some aches right now so although he was gorgeous and charming, I could tell he wasn’t his normal self.  Poor monkey!

When I got home Tuesday afternoon it was to find that there were NO MORE PILES OF DEBRIS anywhere around my home. Dave and crew were in over the Sunday/Monday when I was gone & they cleared out ALL of the piles – meaning that they got rid of all of the branches and tree trimmings and also did a dump run and got rid of the general piles of crap that were accumulating. They even raked the ground around where the piles had been!

Front of the house - no more pile of tree!

Back fence - all the branches are gone!

Holy smokes - I can open the gate again!!

All the logs are gone!

The ugly swing chair - also gone!!!!!

Yesterday, first “full day off” for me, I did a little bit of running around and then came home and started pulling leaved and debris out of the front flower bed – mostly spent the time pulling dead leaves and twigs out from between the flowers that are cropping up out there.

Last night I had a GORGEOUS dinner at Martine’s Bistro in Comox with some of the ladies I work with.  YUM.  Early night for me last night and then today I was up early-ish and did some more running around. Of prime importance on my personal list of things to do today was to get a wheelbarrow.

Once home, I puttered in the kitchen a bit – made some soup, baked a pan of gingerbread and had some lunch.  The rest of the soup is now cool enough to portion off & freeze and the gingerbread is now ready to be iced.  After lunch was done I changed into clothing I didn’t mind getting filthy in & headed outside to work on today’s project: clearing the rest of the front garden bed. 

There was close to 8 wheelbarrow loads of grass, leaves, rocks and gravel to remove – all of which went over the embankment across the street.  I’m told by my neighbour that it’s OK and everyone does it… I didn’t want to send all of the tree branch debris and shrub trimmings down there (all that wood, all dried out in the summer, could be a bit of a fire hazard) so it was shipped off… but all of the rocks and gravel went over the edge.  I figure that since it won’t burn AND it will help shore up some of the sides, it’s a good contribution to the embankment.

All the ugly white rocks are gone & now the front garden bed
is ready to have my Coral Bark Maple planted...

 With 4 days left of this week off, I’m thinking that, if I get clear enough weather to do it, I’ll rake up the rest of the leaves from the back yard and pile them up. Also, if the weather holds AND I can get help from one with a truck to help me get lumber pallets, well, I may even manage to get that compost bin built.  I forgot to get the stucco wire from Dad, but getting the frame in place would be a good start…

For now, though, I’m going to make a hot cup of tea and relax a little on the sofa.

With love across the waters,