My company is expanding very quickly. So quickly that they finally bought the building I work in and they're doing rennovations. All day I get to hear hammers and drills whirring and pounding. I get to smell heaven knows what burning or melting or something...And there's dirty guys (literally dirty, not saying they're bad guys they just have construction-grime all over them) tracking dirt all over the tile making things slippery! (I'm clumsy...slipped in my high-heels on Wednesday, pretty embarrassing...)
Plus, there's never any salt shakers in the break room anymore...and people are doing strange things like excersising and being overly obssesed with Emmy Rossum...totally weird.
And it gets better! Like I said, we're expanding very fast. We provide phone service for hard of hearing people. It's used mostly by the elderly. That means we have a really large customer base making us very busy. Not only are we busy and have less than 1 minute between calls our cubes are stuffed. We are so full of employees it's insane. I'm lucky to find a seat each time I come in...Holy moly, what a life this is these days.
Bright side?
I'm going to 29 Palms on Tuesday. I'm so excited for that. I pretty much packed my bag this morning and I'm not leaving for another 5 days...I know that I'm going to have a good time, but I'm trying to keep a very open mind about everything. I guess we shall see how it goes.
Fifty Shades of Stupid
First of all, I'm going to 29 Palms next week! I'm really excited and it will definitely be fun (and probably a little bit intense...) The 4th of July is the one year anniversary of our first date, so that will be cute. Hopefully It will be an awesome 5 entire days with my Marine.
Second of all, I finally gave in and started reading Fifty Shades of Grey and I hate it! I decided the other night to figure out why everyone is talking about this book and I really don't understand. I mean yeah, it is very...explicit and those parts are very well written, but as for the rest of it, I'm so annoyed with it.
Dialogue is my favorite part of books. I love how I can basically see a conversation happening between two people before my eyes and I think that this is just so unrealistic...Sure, it's a book and the story doesn't have to be realistic, but at least make the characters sound like real people.
And besides all that, it's pretty lame...maybe the other two book will be better but I am so unimpressed with this and I really do not understand how so many people love it. Sorry if you think it's an amazing work of literature, but I can barely stomach it and I'm 240 pages in...
Boo to bad books...
Second of all, I finally gave in and started reading Fifty Shades of Grey and I hate it! I decided the other night to figure out why everyone is talking about this book and I really don't understand. I mean yeah, it is very...explicit and those parts are very well written, but as for the rest of it, I'm so annoyed with it.
Dialogue is my favorite part of books. I love how I can basically see a conversation happening between two people before my eyes and I think that this is just so unrealistic...Sure, it's a book and the story doesn't have to be realistic, but at least make the characters sound like real people.
And besides all that, it's pretty lame...maybe the other two book will be better but I am so unimpressed with this and I really do not understand how so many people love it. Sorry if you think it's an amazing work of literature, but I can barely stomach it and I'm 240 pages in...
Boo to bad books...
Vacation
On Sunday during work, I decided that I would fight the hard battle of getting someone to cover my shifts for a couple of days while I went on a family vacation. At first I was annoyed to be on it at all due to the fact that I would end up losing hours at work and not get paid as much. And that is never a good thing...but I'm so very glad that I decided to go. After complaining about how camp spaghetti usually tastes, I earned myself the chore of cooking it for the whole
This trip is to a tiny potato town called Weiser, Idaho. Every year, they hold a national fiddle competition (what's the difference between the violin and the fiddle? There isn't a difference in the actual instrument. Fiddle refers to the style of music played on it.)
We go there and camp in the sticks behind these big buildings that used to be a college or boarding school (there's a big huge history to the area, but I can't remember. The buildings are big and old, that's all that really matters.) All week we play music until all hours of the night and throughout the day making new friends and reuniting with old ones. This year just so happened to be really cold at night, so we folded down the sides of the wall tent and turned on the heater to jam. Unfortunately the heat got the best of everyone and they started sleepin on the job...
But some people managed to stay awake long enough to keep the jam going. It was probably around 12:00 am when I took this picture. Somehow, the later you stay up, the better the jams get. But we could just be getting more immune to how crappy it can be sometimes.The best part of Weiser is playing music with your friends that you don't usually get to see. The second best part? Yard Sales. Seems how this town is pretty small, this is the biggest week of the year for them. There's so many people from out of town that it's the perfecft time for a yard sale. These signs are just the beginning. There were more on the corners of most streets and signs were stapled to half the powerline poles. Needless to say, I had some awesome finds.
This the best used book store ever. I can't even believe how many printings he had from the 1940s and earlier. It's really cool to see.
This is the MINATURE MASTERS contest. They give really excellent musicians tiny instruments and ask them to play them. The kid in the yellow shirt was camp by us. He and his friend drove all the way from Ohio just for this contest. We fed them some pancakes and lent them phones and made friends with them. That's the best part of these things. Music brings people together :)
And that was my family vaction!
Love Hate Realtionship
There are a lot of things that I love. On the flip side, there are several things that I hate. And sometimes, I both love and hate things. All of the below photographs are things that I both love and hate.
I really love to cross stitch. But it makes me horrible sat when I make a mistake and I have to either cut my thread up and waste a bunch, or I have to un-stitch inorder to save the thread...It drives me crazy and makes my very relaxing hobby stressful.
Even more then having to un-stitch or waste thread, I hate knots. Because the floss is stored on small rectangle bobbins, the thread gets kinked in that shape. It's also three strands of thread, so if you aren't paying careful attention to every single stitch, you get a huge messy knot that you have to untie. And if it isn't fixable, sometimes you have to cut it and yet again waste thread...ugh.
I also love projects. I think it's fun to find something that needs improvement and make it better. But sometimes, I bite off just a little bit more than I can chew. My latest project is called "Operation find the missing socks spread all over my home". This is just the first basket of socks that I found and then folded. Currently, the room I took half a day cleaning has about 50 pairs of socks without buddies spread across it...and I have a whole other basket and then some left. I hate that
If I'm being completely honest, there is nothing that I hate about this little vacuum. I love this thing. I have hard wood floor in my room and it is just a pain to sweep. but this little guy picks up everything. I love it so much that I instagramed it...Yes, I love a mini vacuum cleaner...
I absolutely love cooking and eating my delicious meals...but I hate that I can't just eat a small portion, I have to eat half of the Cream-a-Soup concoctions. It's not helping the whole negative body image issue that I've got going for me...
Don't ask why this picture is upside down...because I'm not really sure why. But these three beauties are my biggest weaknesses. I can't stay away from them and they are making me gain weight...all that extra sugar is no good so I really love and hate them a whole lot.
Perspective
Perspective : (noun) the interrelation in which a subject or its parts are mentally viewed.
(as defined by Merriam-Webster)
Lately, I have been thinking a lot about perspective. I have thought about it in regards to myself and my relationship.
The way you see a certain situation can make the biggest difference. That seems like such a *duh* type of thing, but it's surprising to me how hard it can be to take off my figurative glasses and put on someone elses for a minute or two. I think that it's hard to do because each person has had different experiences in their life that have caused them to see things the way they do.
I think that in a relationship, you have to at least try to trade glasses. When you have an argument , you have to take a step back and gain some perspective from more than just your angle, becasue chances are, there's more than one way to look at whatever situation you might be in.
Hmmm...Example? Probably necessary, I can get confusing when I go all philosophical.
My birthday.
Hmmm...Example? Probably necessary, I can get confusing when I go all philosophical.
My birthday.
In my eyes, a birthday is kind of a big deal. You make some sort of gesture that is going out of your way to be nice to someone because it's their birthday. I see it that way becaseu birthdays in my family are always a big deal. It's not just another day. It's your day.
In J's family, birthdays are not a very big deal. They might have family dinner and cake and icecream but they aren't much for presents and it's just not all that big a deal to do anything particularly special.
So when J just sent me a text that day that said "Happy Birthday (and a few other lovey-dovey things)" and then I didn't hear from him until I sent him a text at 11:00 pm that warned him that I was expecting at least a phone call before the nice was over I was upset. He wasn't even planning on calling me (maybe he was and he got busy or whatever but he was still texting me...I don't know whatever...) but I honestly couldn't be mad at him. From his point of view, there was nothing more to be done after he acknowledged that it was my birthday. Too often, you look at something that a person does for/to you (or doesn't do for that matter) as such a crime when to them, it probably wasn't all that big of a deal. Personally, I think that a lack of multiple perspecitves is where problems root from.
That being said, I don't think that being able to have a different perspective is only important when concerning interelations with others. It's also important for a person as an individual to pick up the object in front of them and take a close look from another angle. Recently, I have been working very hard to gain a different perspective (personally, I don't like to say "gain perspective" without a "different" in there. Because you already have one perspective. Yours.) I have been so down in the dumps lately and have just felt worthless. I have a very negative body image, I feel bad for myself, I think that I'm defective because everything seems to just go wrong for me...
But starting a few weeks ago, I just told myself that it was time to take a step back and try to find a new way to look at this. And I am so glad that I did. Perspective. Give a new one a try. It'll change your life.
In J's family, birthdays are not a very big deal. They might have family dinner and cake and icecream but they aren't much for presents and it's just not all that big a deal to do anything particularly special.
So when J just sent me a text that day that said "Happy Birthday (and a few other lovey-dovey things)" and then I didn't hear from him until I sent him a text at 11:00 pm that warned him that I was expecting at least a phone call before the nice was over I was upset. He wasn't even planning on calling me (maybe he was and he got busy or whatever but he was still texting me...I don't know whatever...) but I honestly couldn't be mad at him. From his point of view, there was nothing more to be done after he acknowledged that it was my birthday. Too often, you look at something that a person does for/to you (or doesn't do for that matter) as such a crime when to them, it probably wasn't all that big of a deal. Personally, I think that a lack of multiple perspecitves is where problems root from.
That being said, I don't think that being able to have a different perspective is only important when concerning interelations with others. It's also important for a person as an individual to pick up the object in front of them and take a close look from another angle. Recently, I have been working very hard to gain a different perspective (personally, I don't like to say "gain perspective" without a "different" in there. Because you already have one perspective. Yours.) I have been so down in the dumps lately and have just felt worthless. I have a very negative body image, I feel bad for myself, I think that I'm defective because everything seems to just go wrong for me...
But starting a few weeks ago, I just told myself that it was time to take a step back and try to find a new way to look at this. And I am so glad that I did. Perspective. Give a new one a try. It'll change your life.
What I Learned At Work Today
I have been neglecting this little dealy so here I go!
Lately, I've been working really hard to get healthy (okay, so I've been fantacizing about how I would get healthy and not really doing what needs to be done...) so I have been learning some stuff about healthy eating habits, cooking, and more fitness stuff.
I've had an extremely negative body image lately and I feel like getting healthy would help that to go away.
Lately, I've been working really hard to get healthy (okay, so I've been fantacizing about how I would get healthy and not really doing what needs to be done...) so I have been learning some stuff about healthy eating habits, cooking, and more fitness stuff.
I've had an extremely negative body image lately and I feel like getting healthy would help that to go away.
So this is what I've learned about healthy eating and fitness:
1. Bake things instead of frying. It takes out the oils and is typically just as good as if it had been fried. I think that I'm going to try these baked cheese sticks for a snack instead of picking up the kind from Arby's. It will not only save money, but it will be heathlier.
2. Cook! When you don't eat out, you will eat healthier. That's just the facts.
3. Don't ban certain foods. Instead wean away from them to where you don't crave them. When you ban food, it automatically makes it more desiralble.
4. Eat more fruits and veggies. In general, they are better for you. They have nutrients that you need and are the foundation of a healthy diet.
5. Try more protien instead of carbs. It give you energy for longer.
(#s 3-5 found here)
FITNESS
1. Work out 6 days a week with one rest day.
2. Focus your work out on certain muscle groups, don't just wander the gym and expect something to jump out at you.
3. Set goals. They make it easier to get up and go and you feel accomplished when you reach them.
4. Don't give up. When you give up, you have to start all over.
5. Fight to be healthy, not to be skinny.
I'm going to try really hard to pound these lovely facts that I learned today into my skull so that I can actually life a healthy lifestyle. :)
To-Do
I love lists. I write lists at work all day long.
I write them about all kinds of things such as things to do before I do, what I want to buy at the store later on, things I think will make my life easier, stuff I learn on Pinterest, and so on and so forth.
Today when I woke up, I wrote myself a to-do list. It looked like this:
1. Start wash.
2. Water the Garden.
3. Go to the gym (I had to write it on the list, or else I wouldn't have gone.)
4. Change over laundry
(Start new load)
5. Take out trash
6. Empty dishwsher
7. Clean room
8. Clean living room
9. Do something about the cross stitch sitch.
10. Put cars on KSL
11. Make DI pile of clothes
12. Do something pointless like watch Dawson's Creek or Gossip Girl.
It ended up looking like this:
1. Start Wash
2. Water the garden.
3. Go to the gym
4. Change over laundry.
(start new load)
5. Take out Trash
6. Empty dishwasher
7. Reload dishwasher
8. Clean room
9. Change over laundry
(Start new load)
10. Do something about the cross stitch sitch.
11. Foood!
12. Restore the fish take to it's former glory (That thing was in some serious need of some TLC)
13. Put away laundry
14. replenish towel supply
15. Clean the kitchen
16. Clean the living room
17. Vacuum the hallway
18. Mow & water the lawn
19. Finish cross stitch (really not part of the plan, but I saw it sitting there and I was on such a roll.)
20. Change over the laundry
(start a new load)
21. Put away all my clothes
22. Put the cars on KSL
23. eat some popcorn and blog about how much work I did today.
I'm honestly not sure that I have every done so much laundry in my life...I could tell you about all the crazy stuff I ran into while doing all this stuff, but frankly, I'm so tired I don't even know how I'm still typing...but I feel like this day did not go to waste and I certainly did an good job making my house look nice. I don't know that I still love lists like I did yesterday.
I write them about all kinds of things such as things to do before I do, what I want to buy at the store later on, things I think will make my life easier, stuff I learn on Pinterest, and so on and so forth.
Today when I woke up, I wrote myself a to-do list. It looked like this:
1. Start wash.
2. Water the Garden.
3. Go to the gym (I had to write it on the list, or else I wouldn't have gone.)
4. Change over laundry
(Start new load)
5. Take out trash
6. Empty dishwsher
7. Clean room
8. Clean living room
9. Do something about the cross stitch sitch.
10. Put cars on KSL
11. Make DI pile of clothes
12. Do something pointless like watch Dawson's Creek or Gossip Girl.
It ended up looking like this:
I'm honestly not sure that I have every done so much laundry in my life...I could tell you about all the crazy stuff I ran into while doing all this stuff, but frankly, I'm so tired I don't even know how I'm still typing...but I feel like this day did not go to waste and I certainly did an good job making my house look nice. I don't know that I still love lists like I did yesterday.
Baby, You Can Drive My Car
Yeah Yeah, I know two posts in one day...but I'm just feeling bloggy today. I have a lot to say for some reason.
Although J is doing his mountain warfare training this month and won't be back to his barracks until around June 21st, he got the chance to call me. Twice! His phone doesn't have service, but his friend's does. It was nice to hear from him after two weeks of nothing from him at all. I loved hearing that he'd been thinking about me even though the whole point of this time apart is to not think about each other...ha...that's a laugh.
So far, this time not talking as been good for us. At least it has been good for me. I'm not worried about why he is or isn't talking to me and I can just enjoy myself and stay busy and do as much stuff as I can to have a good time. I don't know why I haven't been doing this all along. It makes everything so much easier.
I've been hiking, playing music, working in my garden, cleaing my house (ugh...not fun) and staying nice and busy and at the end of the day, I'm excited that I have things to tell J other than, "Today sucked, I miss you. Life sucks. I never do anything..." I can tell that it makes him happier to hear that I'm not so down in the dumps.
Although J is doing his mountain warfare training this month and won't be back to his barracks until around June 21st, he got the chance to call me. Twice! His phone doesn't have service, but his friend's does. It was nice to hear from him after two weeks of nothing from him at all. I loved hearing that he'd been thinking about me even though the whole point of this time apart is to not think about each other...ha...that's a laugh.
So far, this time not talking as been good for us. At least it has been good for me. I'm not worried about why he is or isn't talking to me and I can just enjoy myself and stay busy and do as much stuff as I can to have a good time. I don't know why I haven't been doing this all along. It makes everything so much easier.
I've been hiking, playing music, working in my garden, cleaing my house (ugh...not fun) and staying nice and busy and at the end of the day, I'm excited that I have things to tell J other than, "Today sucked, I miss you. Life sucks. I never do anything..." I can tell that it makes him happier to hear that I'm not so down in the dumps.
***
In other news, I've begun car shopping.
Unfortunately, I won't be able to go to the car lot, get a loan and buy whatever I want, so I've really got to shop.
I would like to have this lovely pearl white Subaru Impreza.
But, yeah, that's not going to happen. I've been shopping a little bit on KSL.com (it's like craig's list except it's just local). I need to find what my dad calls an "out-of-town" car that I can pretty much take anywhere, but then I find myself linger on things that really aren't practical.
Such as jeeps. I can't even describe to you how bad I want a jeep that I can take the top off and drive all over the mountains, but they really just aren't cars that you want to take all over the place, just into the mud.
Even more than a jeep, I'd be so very happy with one of these. No, it's not a Bronco! It's an International Scout...I don't know why I want one so bad, but it really doesn't matter, because they, like Jeeps and the car I currently have are not practical...damn practicaltiy...
Most likely, I will end up getting something like a Honda Civic or a Toyota Corolla, something more in my price range and a bit more suitable for my situation. Currently, I'm driving a GMC Jimmy that guzzles gas faster than I can fill the tank...Anything with better fuel economy will do, even though I dream of bigger and better vehicles. Hopefully I'll be getting something new very soon and all on my own!
Country Music
Currently, I have this obsession with Pandora Internet radio. Along with that, I like to take screen shots of my favorite songs...so in my iPhone camera roll it's mostly screen shots of a million different songs.
I feel a need to do something with them, so here I go :)
Basically, every night before I go to bed, I turn on Pandora, plug in my headphones and cruise Facebook. Or sometimes it's when I'm getting ready for work or for my day or whatever. When something good comes on, I click the home button, rush to Pandora, X out the ad and *BAM* screen shot that. And sometimes I'm dumb like on the Jamey Johnson one and just screen shot the lockscreen...oh well.
Currently, I'm listening to "Eric Church Radio" and these are the lovely songs that I have just loved so much that I had to screenshot them.
Typically, they are songs that I relate to. Ones that when I hear them, I get all weepy and emotional or I get goose bumps or basically just have some kind of response to. So this is what I've got
Jamey Johnson "In Color"
Kenny Chesney "She's Got It All"
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band "Fishin' In The Dark" (I would consider this one mine and J's song...)
Brad Paisley "Mud On the Tires"
Josh Turner "Time Is Love" (This song is new and I loooove it)
Lee Brice "A Woman Like You"
Jason Aldean "Dirt Road Anthem"
Eric Church "Springsteen" (recently, I downloaded this song and I have been listening to it on repeat for the past...like week or so. And I still get excited when it comes on the radio...)
So there you have it. I'm officially crazy for country music...I've always loved it, but this is a whole new kind of obsession for me. (and this isn't even all the screen shots I took...)
My mandolin and me.
I haven't really talked about my music at all yet, so here I go!
I play the mandolin (it has 8 strings and you play it with a pick to play sweet bluegrass music) and I love it! I went through this little...I guess you could call it a slump, where I didn't want to play much. I started when I was 11 and it just kind of got old. I wasn't getting any better and it wasn't quite as fun for me as it once was, but recently, I have decided that I need to play more and I have not regretted it.
Last weekend, we went up to Ogden (a city about 45 minutes outside of Salt Lake) for a "bluegrass" festival. I say that with quotation marks because it wasn't strictly bluegrass music, but there was some good bands that were the correct genre for the event, and that was cool.
Anyway, my friend talked me into playing in the Utah State Instrument Championships. I was not really feeling it and I was sure that I wouldn't place well. I haven't really been practicing and I have been playing in this contest for a long time and haven't really done all that well. Well, oddly enough, I played against 7 other musicians and they were true competition and I took 2nd place! I am truly proud of it!
For the first time in a really long time, music is fun for me and I want to play and play all day long and it's awesome. So, here's to getting a kick out of the things that you used to love and have rediscovered!
Direction
A year ago today, I was sitting at MEPS anxiously awaiting the moment that I got to stand at attention and swear into the Marines with my right hand in the air.
I had to drink a galon of water to weigh 102 lbs and I was so happy that I had finally gotten to where I wanted to be.
Today, I sit at my desk at 110 lbs (without even trying...gosh life is so backwards.) wishing I was anywhere else but where I am right now.
It's true that I am feeling a whole lot better about myself today than I felt last only last week, but it doesn't keep me from wishing that things were different. On Facebook, I'm friends with all kinds of Marines that I knew in the DEP and otherwise and it can be so frustrating to watch them live my dream...I want it so bad and it just won't ever happen.
It's really difficult to not have goals. Sure, I have fitness goals and a few things that I want to get done, but it's just so hard to not have an ulitimate goal. I'm not sure where I want to go from here. I know I say that all the time, but somehow, I feel like I'm getting down to crunch time. It's like, I need to make a choice now or else I'm going to get stuck. I already feel stuck.
Don't get me wrong, throwing myself into that big garden project helped a lot and I feel about 15X better than I did, but now that I'm finished with it, I feel like I need something else big. I need stuff to do in order to distract myself from my intense lack of direction and I'm hoping in the meantime, I figure something out.
I can't help thinking about what things would be like if I hadn't broken my arm...If I had gone to boot camp when I was supposed to...where would I be? I know that it's a waste of time to wonder, but I wish things had been different.
I had to drink a galon of water to weigh 102 lbs and I was so happy that I had finally gotten to where I wanted to be.
Today, I sit at my desk at 110 lbs (without even trying...gosh life is so backwards.) wishing I was anywhere else but where I am right now.
It's true that I am feeling a whole lot better about myself today than I felt last only last week, but it doesn't keep me from wishing that things were different. On Facebook, I'm friends with all kinds of Marines that I knew in the DEP and otherwise and it can be so frustrating to watch them live my dream...I want it so bad and it just won't ever happen.
It's really difficult to not have goals. Sure, I have fitness goals and a few things that I want to get done, but it's just so hard to not have an ulitimate goal. I'm not sure where I want to go from here. I know I say that all the time, but somehow, I feel like I'm getting down to crunch time. It's like, I need to make a choice now or else I'm going to get stuck. I already feel stuck.
Don't get me wrong, throwing myself into that big garden project helped a lot and I feel about 15X better than I did, but now that I'm finished with it, I feel like I need something else big. I need stuff to do in order to distract myself from my intense lack of direction and I'm hoping in the meantime, I figure something out.
I can't help thinking about what things would be like if I hadn't broken my arm...If I had gone to boot camp when I was supposed to...where would I be? I know that it's a waste of time to wonder, but I wish things had been different.
I shoulda been a farmer...or at least a fence builder
So, my garden is complete. I have been working my butt off out there for days under the hot sun and it is now planted and I'm so excited to watch it grow...(hopefully!)
My garden has been a figment of my imagination for quite some time now. At work the other day, I drew plans for about 79 different gardens I knew I would never have (however, I did discover that I have quite a knack for drawing 3D plans.) Ieally, I would have made three different raised beds and it would have been so adorable and it was going to yield beautiful fruits and vegetables that I would be very proud of. Currently, my garden is nothing that I planned, but I couldn't be happier.
I made cute little signs out of random wood and some old nails I knew no one would ever use and strung together a bunch of wire fence pieces that I found. I love that I can just take what I have and make it work. (case and point, hoe/machete...)
Today I drove two fence posts with a driver that weighs 20 lbs. Let me tell you, if you have some pent up anger or some type of issue in your life and you need a physical outlet, driving a fence post will make you feel real good.
I planted the herbs in the adorable washtubs. Don't they look pretty?
And of course, it's necessary to make a sign that says "Herbs" just in case you forget...
Here is my lovely finished product. Looks pretty good to me! Now lets say a little prayer that it doesn't get eaten by snails...
Cheaper Than Therapy
I have been needing something to keep my mind off of all my troubles. I chose to begin this gigantic project of turning nothing into something. After all, they say gardening is cheaper than therapy and will do the same things for ya. So far, I have not been disappointed. I have been working my butt off since I got home from work yesterday only stopping to drink water and then a quick gym break.
I started with that mess of weeds and ivy and bugs...ugh lots of bugs.
After working for a few hours with a hoe, a shovel and a rake, I finally got the whole thing turned over and ended up finishing up around 9:00. It was dark when I got all done so it's hard to see all my hard work, but it looks a lot better. Lucky for me, my mom came out and decided that our "lawn" needed to be mowed. Now I have a nice little space to work that isn't totally overgrown with...every weed known to man.
I plan to build a fence to keep the chickens and the dog out, and I want to use paving stones around the outside edges to make it all cute. I have my work cut of for me, but so far, it's looking great and I'm feeling so good about it. Even if it yields nothing but weeds, at least I learned something from it and I get to take all my...pain and anger out on the weeds with the hoe...I love that hoe.
After working a little bit more this morning, I've got this lovely mess that is well on it's way to looking like a garden. I can't wait for it to be all finished and to see my hard work pay off.
If you have a garden and happen to know the best tricks in the world to make it successful, I have a feeling I'm going to need all the help I can get! Your advice is greatly appreciated. :)
[EDIT]
After a quick little break to go help my mom out, I was back in the garden hard at work. (unfortunately I got a little waylaid when I found one of my little sister's chickens had been caught by my dog. :( I felt so bad but I buried it and we had a nice little birdy funeral...sad day) Notice how sparkly I look...I hadn't really gotten into the meat of the work yet, just picked out more weeds and stuff that was still sitting in there. It had cooled off nicely and I had to throw on a flannel shirt so basically I felt like a farmer and it was awesome.
After turning over the soil again and again basically just being a human rototiller, I decided that I couldn't deal with all that ugly ivy. Of course the only solution was to rip it all out. Sadly I didn't have the necessary tools, so I just hack at it with the hoe...it got the job done but I could have used a machete...
That isn't even half of the ivy that I ripped off the fence, that's just a break time picture...it was ridiculous.
[EDIT]
After a quick little break to go help my mom out, I was back in the garden hard at work. (unfortunately I got a little waylaid when I found one of my little sister's chickens had been caught by my dog. :( I felt so bad but I buried it and we had a nice little birdy funeral...sad day) Notice how sparkly I look...I hadn't really gotten into the meat of the work yet, just picked out more weeds and stuff that was still sitting in there. It had cooled off nicely and I had to throw on a flannel shirt so basically I felt like a farmer and it was awesome.After turning over the soil again and again basically just being a human rototiller, I decided that I couldn't deal with all that ugly ivy. Of course the only solution was to rip it all out. Sadly I didn't have the necessary tools, so I just hack at it with the hoe...it got the job done but I could have used a machete...
That isn't even half of the ivy that I ripped off the fence, that's just a break time picture...it was ridiculous.
When I finally finished tearing off all the ivy, I decided that I wanted to plant my herbs in these wash tubs on the other side of the back yard. They already had soil in them and I figured I'd just mix it in with the garden dirt...I didn't think about the fact that the soil made it 10X heavier, I dragged it all the way across the yard, dumped out the soil and then was able to pick it up. I felt a little dumb. But look how cute they are!After that, my dad came out and suggested I dig out the part right up next to the fence. So I did. It went pretty quick because now I'm basically an old pro.
This is the finished product after I dug up the back part, added two bags of manure, and added one bag of pete moss. When I was all finished cleaning up all the ivy and stuff, it was dark, so I couldn't get a good picture, but my garden just needs a fence and it will be all ready to plant.
