from awful to just plain bad

that's the right wording to describe the state of our front yard at this time. yesterday canuck and i took complete advantage of the glorious weather and spent the entire day outside working on the front lawn. we pulled up two half-dead bushes, dug trenches around the soil-grass interface, pulled some weeds, raked a bit, trimmed our weeping mulberry trunks, and pruned our endless-summer hydrangea, which, much to our delight, has started to sprout. i was also ecstatic to see the daffodil bulbs that we planted this winter also starting to sprout, as well as our peony bush and hazelnut tree in the backyard.

unfortunately, our topsoil is clay-like and completely devoid of nutrients, there's more weeds than i can keep track of, and our lawn is just overrun with detritus. our neighbors were nice enough to give us gardening tips and lend us some gardening tools, but one of them politely confirmed our diagnosis - our lawn is crappola. actually, she was very nice and said, hey, rome wasn't built in a day and you guys are doing great, these things just take a lot of time. she was the one who taught me how to prune and told us where to get the new soil. did you know you can buy a "yard" of it and they just dump it on your front lawn? so you know what we're doing all next weekend. today when canuck gets home we're going to lay the fertilizer down as it's supposed to rain and be cooler tomorrow. the city girl in me just wants to throw in the hat - i didn't know it would be so much WORK! it's a joint effort, but i'm about to pick up the phone and call for professional help, just for the cleanup and setup. canuck vehemently refuses. we are going to tackle this ourselves, he absolutely insists. great. while our neighbors are sporting beautiful flowers and lush green lawns, we're just trying to bring ours back from the dead so it doesn't look like calcutta in a heat wave. but our neighbors are cheering us on. i think they find it adorable and amusing that we're trying so hard. we are first time home-owners, after all, and the youngest people on our block. maybe i'll just call the professionals when canuck's gone and have them do it , and then when he gets back he'll think that i did it all myself. hmmm.....

actually, it has been good for all of us. cookie hangs outside with us instead of in front of the t.v. and i've gotten tons of exercise from all this. plus it keeps us out of the kitchen and away from grazing. maybe i'll loose those 10 pounds i've been wanting to shed. and at least we're making a dent. awful to bad is a step up!