Lawnwork

[eredien]

So, rabidfangurl was here for the weekend, which was a lot of fun.
And today, rusalka and baniszew and I just spent about 6 hours in the yard, planting grass seed and a small tree (flowering cherry. !) and a border of mini sunflowers/wildflowers, and digging up the weeds that had sprouted and trying not to step on the tulips that had already sprouted.

And we also cleaned out the backyard. It's paved over, and hadn't been cleaned since before the current crop of residents had moved in, 3+ years ago. Oh my god. So horrible and disgusting and nasty. So many leaves, random rusty parts, bottles of "what is this--oh yuck, it's rusted open and spilled on my shoes!"
6 large trash buckets parts of random broken house bits left by contractors through the years; 6 bags of wet leaves, one bucket of sticks, one old cooler full of plastic bags and food wrappers, one plastic kiddie pool (there have been no kiddies in this house for at least three or four years). A giant metal pipe that used to hold on the porch is now in pieces in the trash can.

But it's done now.

I also fixed the mechanism on the old pocket doors between the living room and the dining room so that when you press the button the little handle pops out of the slot. That took a lot of oil.

I also finished the corkboard made of real corks and hung it on the wall.

We're having a cookout to celebrate having a backyard, finally. We have about 40% more space in the backyard! And a tree in the front yard!

Exciting! Things are looking up.

Comments

[friode.livejournal.com]

You probably want to remove the hyphen from the lj user stuff.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Our backyard is paved, except for a couple little dirt circles. One of which has a bush, the other is empty. It's just kinda creepy, somehow. Especially with the pile of abandoned bicycles of unknown origin that fills one corner.

I planted some marigold seeds in the empty one in the dead of night, the other day.

[rax.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, you have a bike graveyard too? At least we know where ours came from...

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there's something like ten bikes piled up in a corner. Forgotten.

Our best guess is that they're from the cyclist punks who lived in 1L when I first moved out here; one of 'em rode a tall bike made by welding together a couple other bikes, so other bikes would theoretically be parts. But we don't know for sure.

Maybe someday I should poll the other residents of the building (via notes) as to the provenance of these bicycles, and see about disposing of them in some semi-sensible way like calling up a bike shop and saying 'are these useful for parts? they're yours if you want to haul them off' if it turns out that they're unowned and not totally rusted out.

[rax.livejournal.com]

The obvious place to give them to would be Bikes Not Bombs (http://www.bikesnotbombs.org/donate) assuming they are interested in a pile of parts as opposed to whole bikes, which they probably are unless they are in really awful shape. If they want them, I could probably toss them all into the back of my van and bring them; it might be an excuse to toss a couple of mine that I will never get to on the pile. :) You're also like two blocks or something from SCUL headquarters; I bet people there would have use for them.

[nucl3arsnke.livejournal.com]

That was good of you. I just leave the yardwork up to my landlord, but I must confess, he doesn't really take satisfactory care of it.

[eredien]

Thanks; the lj tags are so strange I always forget if I need the hyphen in there or not. This is why I should preview more before I post.

[eredien]

The bushes in front of the house were dead; if we let the landlord take care of the lawn it would still be overgrown with thistles, etc.

[friode.livejournal.com]

lj-cut requires a hypen; I believe the others (lj user=foo and some others I have forgotten) do not. (Which I'm saying mostly to point out that some use a hypen and some don't.) And yes, the design is somewhat poor.

[friode.livejournal.com]

I usually just read the formatted versions of my posts after posting them, and edit if I see obvious errors, but maybe that's lazy of me.