Having Fun on V-Day

Yesterday we had a great amount of fun in Elk Grove (just outside of the historic town of Franklin) helping to make the future habitation of J & S habitable. I worked on the outside and the other 3 worked on cleaning up the inside. Here are some fun photos. Tomorrow is another day.

We begin with the notorious "wall of purple" - once the place is clean, this is the first to go. The photo really doesn't do it justice, it is quite shocking. And it continues into the kitchen.

This is the view looking out from the kitchen into the room with the purple wall. It is really a nice room, with a fireplace and a lot of light coming in through the sliding glass door leading out to a really nice patio in the back yard. More on that later.

Now for some before & after photos. This is the front yard as it appeared last week. Of special note is the weed growing to about 24 inches tall on the right side of the driveway. I took special pleasure in pulling that one out by the roots.

And here is how it looked after I got through with it yesterday. Mowing it all down was a challenge because there were clumps that were 10-12 inches high, and all of it was at least 6 inches high, and wet wet wet. It was a perfect day to work in the yard though, nice and coole, lots of clouds blowing through, a pretty good breeze, even windy at times, but the rain held off all day.

This is the little section on the left of the driveway. I filled their green waste toter with just the stuff from the front yard.

And here is the backyard. I am really sad that I didn't get any shots of it before I started. The weeds back here - no lawn, just weeds - were mostly from 6 - 24 inches high, with patches up to around 30 inches. So I just left the bag off of the mower and mulched it all. This was perhaps the most fun part of the day. The mower was great and it looks pretty nice now. Edging in both the front and back yards was a challenge with the weed whacker I have (which is getting a little long in the tooth), but it hung in there and it all turned out great.

Here is the BEFORE, courtesy of James:

And here is the AFTER:

Here's the view from the patio. See the pot on the corner? It was out in the "field" and was totally obscured from view - as were many other little "finds" that I had to keep a sharp eye out for so they wouldn't get "processed" with the weeds.