mulching madness

Boyo and I have felt like we haven't worked enough on the house lately, but we have so made up for it this weekend. I thought we were busy yesterday but today we really got some stuff done. We have finished putting one coat of drywall on the bedroom walls.. it needs to dry and then we (ahem, M) will sand it down and see where we're at. We went shopping, had overpriced ice cream, then we came home and weeded, planted a hibiscus, pulled at vines, and put mulch down in front of the porch. I cannot tell you in words just how good it looks. I have had a vision since we moved in of the dark reddish mulch in a curvy pattern in front, with the ferns hanging on the porch, and.. well. It looks even better than I had planned.

Note the mulch (how can I be so happy about buying $20 worth of sticks and dirt?) and the ferns. There are also two rose bushes, one directly under the fern closest to the driveway, and the other under the farthest one.. you might not be able to see that one unless you know what you're looking for. My in-laws bought those for me for my birthday, and the ferns. (They don't know about the ferns yet.. we have taken pictures to send them but I haven't had time to resize and upload them.) They're peace roses.. I shall tell the story of why they wanted me to have those another day. At the far left, you can see the one rhododendron bloom.. next year will be better. There are two bushes there, and they were just about to be choked out by the ivy, so we're just happy they're alive at all. The dark green plant just to the right of the rhododendron is the hibiscus we just bought. The mulch stops at the end of the porch but will go on to the end of the house when we have time to get that area weeded and more mulch purchased. I think we're also going to add some sort of divider between the grass and the mulch.. once we figure out what we want to have there. I need to work on my curves a little more, too. Right now I'm just hoping that when we get all the stuff put down, we'll stop buying plants because this yardwork thing is eating a hole in my wallet.

Speaking of mulch, did you know you could buy rubber mulch? It's made from recycled tires. It looks realistic, and (I assume) the benefit is that it doesn't fade and doesn't break down like real wood would. Am I the only one creeped out by that? I don't know why but I sure am. M wants to buy a fake-mulch mat for the dogwood, so apparently he doesn't feel the same as me about it. Also, mulch is a stupid word and I am sick to death of typing it, so I'd better move on.

We also went down to the public library's used book sale. We meant to go yesterday but didn't think of it until it was too late. Today is the day you can fill up bags and boxes for a set price, so we came out of there with two gigantic bags for $6. Thank you to sunflower_pixie for mentioning it, otherwise I would never have realized there was a sale this weekend. Wish we had been able to go earlier.. things were very picked over at this point, of course. Still, we ended up with quite a bargain.

And, a quick update on the whole bed in the dining room thing: it is really weird (say, when you're reclining in bed watching Iron Chef America with a bowl of popcorn.. at least I was sitting on M's side in case of spillage.. there's thinking ahead!) but we both slept pretty well, so that's positive, at least...