After affects from The Rock

This morning UD went outside to rake an area of the yard that has a lack of grass.  I was going to follow right behind him, because we had a list of things to take care of.  However, he returned quickly, because there were men from the town working on the street doing a Spring clean-up and he feared he would look like a novice in comparison to them.  So he decided to come back in and wait for them to hop in their truck and leave.

I went to the computer to read the always enjoyable blog http://www.housebehindtheotherhouses.blogspot.com/.  I was reading how Ellen was checking her compost and doing more reading up on it.  And this was done in order to have the perfect compost set-up.  That dame (french for lady) is always on top of things.  It was then that I realized UD and I were letting a few dedicated town workers make us feel inferior.  I went to the other room and I said to UD, are we Mice, or are we Men?  He said Mice.  Well that didn't stop us from going out and getting to it.  Thanks HBTOH.

This is the grass/sod that MW had ripped up and saved for us.

I was actually a little less than gracious when UD told me he asked MW to save the grass.  It just seemed like UD was doing a little "collecting" and I like to get rid of things.  But believe it or not, I had to reverse my bad attitude, because it really turned out to be a good idea. 

We will add some grass seed and give it lots of TLC.  Hopefully we will get a nice thick area of lawn.

The next area we wanted to tackle is right near the water meter.  There is a bush there that I have to cut back each year, in order for the water meter reader to get his reading.  We don't know what the bush is, but we believe it is in the lilac family.  The blooms smell like lilac, but it doesn't bloom until the summer.  And the leaves look nothing like a lilac.  Any who, we decided we want to remove it and put in some perennials.  There is also a jaggedly stone wall there that we have decided to rebuild.  Stone wall building goes back to my Grandmother Mary Bernard, or Nannie as we called her.  I am going to do my best to seize some hereditary resources and build a wall just as fine as she has done.

UD carefully placed the now Stump Bush in the stream across the street.  He did this 5 or 6 years ago with another bush.  That bush flourished the following Spring, and somebody actually dug it up and took it.  So we were hoping for the same with this Stump Bush.

Then I thought of Sister E.  She had posted a blog about an Ugly Strip of land she passes by.  She wondered about planting something there to make it a more of a Beautiful Strip.  Or at least a Passing Strip.  I offered up Stump Bush and she said she would love to take it.  I believe she said she may grow it in a container first.  On Easter weekend, I will travel with Stump Bush from The Rocky Coast to a Small City in Eastern Massachusetts.

Back to wall building:

In the basement we had these two black iron rails.  Several years ago we ordered a mail box from Plow and Hearth.  It stands on these iron rails.  Within the first few days of having set up the mail box, it leaked.  I got in touch with Plow and Hearth and they said they would replace it.  Well they replaced the whole thing.  Rails and all.  Of course UD saved the rails, even though I was sure there would never be a use for them.  Wrong again.  Darn it!!  We will use them to bolster up some rocks we are going to place in there against that piece of wood you can see.  Then hopefully we can level the area out with dirt and plant some flowers.  And the newly built wall will showcase those flowers I hope.

We need additional rocks in order to rebuild this wall properly.  Some we got from the construction site where we found The Rock.  Others we got from our own yard.  UD dug these up from a slope in the back.

We piled the rocks in the wall area and will soon get to building.  I think Nannie is looking down and smiling!

I would like to end this post with a picture of the chimney of the house behind the house that Nellie sold us.  There is a seagull that lands on the chimney every time we are outside working.  Today there were two.  It is nice to have a friend, nes cafe?

 A bientot!  See you soon.