Getting down and dirty

It's getting warmer and warmer as the weeks go on.

I'm taking advantage of the good weather and getting the backyard cleaned up. I suggested pulling the weeds and cutting back the two out-of-control, crazy looking rose bushes, and cutting off the dried out palm tree branches/fronds (sp?). But alas, my suggestions fell on deaf ears. And as I am one who takes work straight on, I went and did this stuff by myself.

Someone didn't want to pull the weeds that had sprouted ALL.OVER the backyard and decided to spray the weeds to death. That would work. If the weeds were less than 4 inches tall. Seriously. Our weeds were as tall as a foot. And it wasn't one weed here. And one weed there. It was a whole jungle out there! So if you spray foot-tall weeds? You end up only getting the top portion of them. You end up having to spray them again. And they don't just shrivel up and disappear like they do in the commercials. You end up with these pale beige husks of the weeds.

A week after the "spraying" incident, I invested a few hours pulling the weeds. I did about 3/4 of the backyard. And you could totally tell that I'd done something out there. I mean, I ended up with three huge garbage bags full fo the stuff. Who knew that weeds could be so darn heavy? I left the one corner un-pulled. And you know what? Those pale beige husks are still out there.

Anyway, LAST weekend I was out there again but tackled the rose bushes. The one rose bush was CRAZY tall. Taller than me! I had to cut the bush down and then cut up the branches into manageable pieces. Small enough to fit into our city-issued garbage can. I was able to fit MOST of the bushes into the can, but there were still 3 large extensions of the bush that I still had to cut up. I didn't do it today, but I did suggest to someone that it be done tomorrow. We'll see if it gets done. But if it doesn't? I'll be getting down and dirty again next weekend.