Best. Day. Ever.

Yesterday, seeing how the weather was gorgeous, had us both in a cheery mood and feeling like doing something great. I convinced my husband to go to the backyard and determine which of the trees can be cut down. There is moss growing where grass should be growing and several of the trees are dead anyway. So those were easy decisions and then we continued meandering back to the "shrubbed-in" section of our land. 

Previously, like before the owner from whom we purchased this place, the property was owned by a landscaper who had some bit of a nursery. Maybe I've mentioned this before but 40+ years for shrubs can make them huge! Between blackberry brambles, multi-floral roses, other nameless bushes, and said shrubs, it's a jungle back there. 

But. There is one semi-clearing that, thanks to Josh and my favorite-guy-in-the-whole-world, is now amazing!!!

Look at this!!! It's like our own little paradise! You can't see any trucks, or whole houses, and if you sit back and pretend, you can't even hear any traffic. :) 

 

The trail back into there looked so cool, I thought; the guys didn't like getting scratched so we widened it too finally, but wasn't it romantically "trail-ish" with the overhanging bushes?!

 Blake's new mower is fantastic too. I thought it was a bit overkill, but now that I've seen how great it is at clearing land, I love it! 

He did a lot of the mowing while Josh and I clipped the larger bushes and tried to stay ahead of the ginormous mower. 

That brush pile just kept getting bigger and bigger and finally I lit it on fire. 

Josh, Logan, and Sandy all left about dark and we stopped clearing after we couldn't see any more.

Then we cooked hot dogs,

and sat on stumps close to the fire -

and even closer to each other,

 and toasted marshmallows 

(and ate as many as we wanted!),

and wished that the night would never end. 

It's our little haven out there- I love it!

Wants and Needs

Most people have a lot of wants, but I have tons. Like a lawnmower, and a couch and a shop-vac and a filter system for our water. In fact, I've convinced myself that actually most my wants are really needs. The lawn has to be mowed by weekend, our couch looks like we don't appreciate having company come, and there would be so many uses for that shop-vac. And the water here is so bad! So see, I'm really just wanting something that I need.

I have a new one though. 

And it is completely, 100%, a need. 

I need a chainsaw. 

For some reason that makes my husband very nervous though. He even encouraged me that it would be a very bad thing if I would go find one to buy, like I told him that I was headed to do a few nights ago.

So I did what any girl in my position would do. I went to Lowe's and bought these.

And I've used them a ton already. They can only cut as much as my strength allows, so I probably won't cut my leg open with them. Now at least I can tackle 'a little' bit of the 'a lot' that needs to be done.
 Brush clippers... are great. :)

This Week

I have been:

A Receptionist

[picture me, at my desk, on the phone :) ]

and a Pyromaniac

and a Varnisher

and a Landscaper

and a Carpenter.

Along with that, I have been housekeeper, and delivery girl, and bolt bin organizer, and drywaller, and my husband's best friend.

Yep, it's been a fun week. :) 

Out My Kitchen Window

 You may not have noticed from my last post's picture, but since the snow left and the mud has dried up, I'm becoming amazed by the disorder that is left from last fall's deposit of us with all of our stuff onto this property.

*smirk- to put it lightly, of course!*

Some days it's easy to get discouraged if I am greeted by this scene when I come home from work.

The reality is that in a half an hour this can be looking much tidier, but when I step closer and look out the window, the real discouragement might just choose to kick in.

Why did that tree never get removed last fall after it got pushed over? Why are there so many mud ruts in the back yard and think how much work it's going to be to fix them! And to top it all off, I'm pretty sure that the spruce trees straight behind there really are just dying and I do dislike those trees, but they kinda create a bit of a hedge back there; really who wants to stare at even more trucks while washing dishes?

And all those thoughtful suggestions of cutting the trees and building a fence...I don't care to stare at a high boring fence while I wash my dishes either.

But this is my thought on the matter. 

The back of the house used to have a giant tv antennae with all kinds of exposed live wires and a pole light that flickered on and off 24 hrs a day. That whole contraption came down one sunny Sunday afternoon a few weeks ago thanks to my funny honey.

(Then I left him on the roof for a while because I couldn't find a tall enough ladder and the antennae that he climbed up had now come down.)

So the back of the house already looks tidier.

The day that the tree got pushed over and then the skid steer died was the straw that broke the camel's back and the skid steer's fuel system got some work done to it and it doesn't die quite the same now. It's just too muddy now to move the tree.

This left row of trucks that is sitting so close to making more mud ruts in the yard is all part of the way that we can pay for the land that they sit on. The fact that they aren't making muddy ruts is because we were able to install driveway there last fall before it snowed. The trucks can now get pulled in and out of the shop without dragging in a five gallon bucket of mud on every tire.

(And the cool thing about trees- even dead ones, means that trucks can't get parked too close to the house. )

There was a point before I got married when a well meaning friend asked me how I was going to handle it when my husband would buy another truck. "I mean, what if he keeps buying trucks and..." I remember saying "So. I don't care". And it's a good thing that I didn't care because he bought 25 trucks that first year after we got married. And no, none of them got sold all in one piece. The point is that no, we do not have a junk yard, but we do make our money off of trucks, whether they are customers' repairs or our parts trucks. 

We have food on our table and a pretty awesome roof over our heads and if it weren't for those trucks in the back yard, there wouldn't be food or the roof. 

And I am incredibly thankful!

But just in case I forget that, I put some little notes on my window, just to remind me. 

This way, before I look out the window and consider whether I should be discouraged, I can see this and have a little reminder about the good things in my life. 

That doesn't mean that when I walk out back to the compost pile and see this, that I won't feel overwhelmed all over again, but the reminder is good. 

The cool part is that I like to work and cleaning and organizing are among my top favorite things to do. 

The awesome part is that we're not here to lead a perfectly clean and tidy life. Stuff's always going to get in the way; it's the people and their lives who matter for eternity and that's what I want to always remember.

I Must Remind Myself:

It could always be worse.

(For instance, this could be in front of my house rather than far behind!)