Sayonara to guests and weeds

This weekend we did all the last minute fun stuff that we wanted to squeeze in before the end of Kathryn and Erena's visit.

We did a picnic/cook out at the lake with Aunt Carolyn and Aunt Licia.

We did a trip to the bouncy castles.

Then we ate a huge meal at Red Robin and went to bed for an early start towards the airport.

On Saturday morning Kathryn and Erena bid us a fond farewell and headed back on the monstrously long trip to Japan. Kiernan and I dropped them off at around 10 am and I got the "We are home safe and sound" email at 635 am on Sunday. Poor poor them.

One of the things I love to an unseemly degree is bagels. Everyone in my household loves bagels. I have been hoping to take Kiernan to Bagel City in Rockville for a while now and on the way back from the airport we took advantage of our proximity to great bagels and made the stop.

Kathryn loves bagels too and we were talking on the way to the airport about what American food she would have if she could get one more and she said bagels. So we dedicated our gnoshes to her. We also got some great hamentashen.

This series of pictures was taken over the course of about 2 minutes. It has not much to do with anything but I do think it illustrates the way that time passes so so slowly when you are a little child. Once David comes out with the burritos both kids ratchet toward him with the hopeful 'no more sitting still' look.

On Sunday we drowned our sorrows in yard work. Dad came up and sawed the Swamp Oak into bits and David carried them to the back lot. Originally we were going to use the wheel barrow but the tire went flat with the weight and then wouldn't hold air thereafter.

A quick mother son visit to the tractor supply store got us a new wheel but most of the wood was already moved by the time we got back.

Look at the size of those logs! My husband is crazy strong! Also notice Kiernan's little stump. He was so happy to be just like daddy.

We took out all the hosta from the front bed and then pulled all the wild strawberry and poison ivy. We also recovered both the rock boarder that this bed apparently one had and all the bijillion rocks that were scattered throughout the soil.

We wound up with 4 mid-sized piles of stones.

Somewhere in this portion of teh program I got bitten by a mole that I was hoping to safely transfer to a non-pick ax area.

ha

Dad brought up some soil amendment and the plan was to use the roto-tiller to mix it all in once the stones were out. It had been a few years since that machine had been started and despite everyone's best efforts it just wouldn't turn over. There was the changing of the gas and the exposure of the air filter and the pouring of the gas directly into the carburetor but it just didn't work.

So we did it the old fashioned way. 

Let us take a moment to admire dads dreads here.

Let us take another to rue the shale content of our yard. HOLY COW! So many rocks.

We then raked and leveled the bed and started putting pots and hosta and sedum in all the spaces we thought they should go. We also made an augmented stone boarder around our newly enlarged and corrected flower bed.

Our plan is to replace every tree we cut down with at least one more. In the center of this bed is our first new tree: the Japanese Persimmon.

We didn't manage to get everything into the ground yesterday due to exhaustion and heat and the kids not putting up with anymore parental distraction.

I expect to get a good updated picture up here by mid week with everything in the ground.

Not pictured anywhere here is our new 7 bush large blueberry patch. Yum Yum.