Baby Got Back(yard)

My dad came over this weekend to help me get the backyard tamed. We had a lot of tall grass and a lot of weeds, and I didn't want to scatter all of that and then have to rake it up and bag it so I asked him to bring his power mower. We raked the thatch a bit before we mowed,  mostly in the southwest corner of the lot where the grass was tallest. I also raked out the non-grass are along the back fence and bagged all the dead leaves and stuff up. It was sort of like a treasure hunt, with bizarre items as the gold and jewels.

Before I get into that, let me tell you about what we accomplished. We raked all the dead leaves and thatch out of the yard, raked them out of the non-grass areas, cut the grass, bagged all the debris, tested the sprinklers, sprayed weed-killer on the weeds (Ortho in the grass, Round-Up elsewhere), re-cut the grass (with my mower), trimmed in the front, tuned the sprinklers, laid out some Turf Builder and took a great big load of crap to the dump. It was a lot to do, but the yard is really looking much better.

So, now to give you a list of everything we pulled out of the thatch. keep in mind that these are not things that were in the pile of garbage on the side of the house, these are things that were so thoroughly buried under dead leaves and grass that I didn't know they were there, despite having spent hours in the back yard. The items unearthed include:

-One Barbie leg
-One horseshoe
-One swingset trapeze bar
-One shoe
-Two skateboards (a full-sized one and a toy one)
-One plastic race car
-Several Nerf guns
-Several water guns
-One plastic army guy leg
-Several plastic torsos (Power Rangers, by the look of 'em)
-One baseball
-One softball
-One ball pit ball
-Several golf balls
-One tampon
-One butter knife
-One metal meat tenderizer
-One dead snake
-One Minnie Mouse tin lid
-One dinner plate
-One Digimon watch
-Several foam pads
-Part of a hat

I think that's it. Here's a picture of some of it. Unfortunately, I started throwing things in trash bags before I realized quite how many things I'd find and want to document.

Yeah, there it is. Oh, I almost forgot the best part! How do you know your grass is too long? When you cut it down and find a Bantha.

Darn right.

Also, here are some more pics of work we did and what it all looks like now. Enjoy!

Remember how much trash we hauled out of here before? It has built back up as we've pulled stuff out of the lawn and around from the other side of the house. Those dozen or so bags are all lawn debris, and they're only about half of the total bags we pulled out since we started.

It seriously doesn't even look like the same place, does it? This is as clean as this area has been in years, I'm sure of it. The bike on the right will live in the garage eventually, or it will go to Goodwill when I get a replacement.

We also have some flowers blooming. They're very pretty and they're sort of shielding the electrical boxes in the corner of our yard.

Jenna planted some strawberries in this planter the previous owners left for us. They're looking pretty good!

Look at the cute little berries! We're going to have to do some work to protect these babies from the birds, for sure. Maybe we can make a metal mesh hood to go over here and keep them out. We'll see what happens, I guess.

Here's the lawn all raked and mowed. It's still pretty brown, but sprinklers every morning and the beautiful Colorado sunshine will get it feeling right in a few weeks, I'm sure. I did put some patching compound on the dirt areas where we had heavy weeds before. Hopefully that will grow soon, too.

Also, I did a little bit of work inside. We're slowly poking away at the hall bathroom. We wanted to take down the towel bar above the toilet and put up a towel ring next to the sink.

These are the mounts for the towel bar. I pulled these off to get rid of the molly bolts behind them. I was pretty worried about pulling those out without destroying the whole wall.

Luck! These aren't mollies, they're some kind of screw-in thingy. They come out nice and easy and still hold things nice and tight. I'm thinking of using them to mount the towel ring instead of the mollies that were provided. They should be easy to use and plenty sturdy.

See how easy these are? They just screw right out of the wall. No digging, no clipping, just a slotted screwdriver and you're done. You can also re-use them, which I'm totally going to do.

Now to patch, texture and paint the walls in there. I'm hoping to get some of that done shortly. Woot!

Thanks for reading, everyone.