I went to Curves this morning and came home hoping to crash…. well, I barely had time for a “break” when I walked back down the hall and there was my sweet puppy looking at me… with those puppy eyes….

(Please ignore the ugly couches… the dark denim slipcovers are downstairs in the pile we call Mt Grotegut. Don’t worry… they will come back up on Sunday evening when we fold laundry while watching a movie and the living room will be happy again.)

Here’s the “conversation” we had in the hall:

“Please mom, Please mom, let’s go outside and play!!! Can we, can we, PLEEEEEZE?”

“But Sadie, Mom’s pooped and wants to blog.”

“PLEEEEEEEEEEZE Mom?”

“Ok… let’s go…”

Look at those eyes! Tell me you could resist! 😛

So out we went.

And as all “small children” go… we got outside and she didn’t really want to “play”… she just wanted to be outside… forget rope tug, catch, whatever.

So I decided to water the flower garden.

That got her attention… zoom zoom right over to the hose. Sadie has this thing for trying to eat the water as it sprays out the nozzle. Needless to say I ended up soaked. Little turd.

After a few minutes of getting too much water and deciding she’d rather breathe than choke on the spray she retreated to her spot on the hill under the cherry tree….

And this is what I ended up doing outside…. I was out there, in my grubbies and it needed to be done so I did it.

We have this flowerbed that wraps around the back side of the house. We planted it about 7 or so years ago and it’s just gone to crap. No other way to say it. It’s just gotten overgrown and weedy and we just didn’t like how it was looking.

The weigelia bush (behind the front daylily) has never grown… I don’t know what’s up with it… it gets leaves but doesn’t “grow”. I pulled out a ton of the perennials that I am sure are going to go to the dump. The remaining perennials are ones I’d like to keep and transplant but need to wait to pull them until we get some buckets to put them in or something.

Along the way I had to fight for my ground. These nasty little stinkers were EVERYWHERE… and they aren’t your normal LITTLE garden grasshoppers… These are UTAH BEASTS. Nasty. Nasty.Nasty.Ugly.Gross. They kept flying at me and jumping all over the place. Where’s a seagull when you need one???

I am sure you really didn’t want to be face to face with that little guy, did ya? Ok, they are ugly and icky, but at the same time they are kind of beautiful in their own right. Now if they’d just stop eating my plants!!!! This little stinker was on my back door window when I went back in the house. Shooo!

Anyway…. we plan on removing all the bark mulch and ripping up the landscaping fabric, then removing half the soil and blending in some good mulch and other organic goodies to loosen the nasty clay soil and install a good drip irrigation system. It’s all gonna happen sometime this fall (we hope)… but it sure looks a lot better now with the ratty old plants out of it!

I think it’s time to hit the showers. I’ve edited a boatload of photos for some more crafty goodness…. Here’s a sneak peek…

Inky Smiles!