Garden Party

Phew... I'm exhausted!

This weekend was the weekend I'd picked out to dismantle the flower box around our back tree, plant grass, and rebuild the box on the other side of the yard for a salsa garden. It was also the weekend our friend's boys had their first birthday party and my scheduled eight mile run. You're exhausted just reading about it, I know.

Saturday we slept in, so that already got us off to a late start and unfortunately (and maybe somewhat planned) not enough time to get our run in and cleaned up prior to heading to the party. So, rather than opting to just sit and watch TV, we decided to be productive. We were able to get the dirt out of the flower box and began removing the wooden planks when our cordless drill decided to die on us. Couldn't have been better timing. Clearly it was cake time.

It's now 3:30PM, our bellies are full of chocolate cake and I'm sure you can already guess, there's no way you're getting my running shoes on me now. So, still deciding not to flake out and jump on the couch, we get our work clothes back on and complete phase one of the whole process. Flower box disassembled, grass seed planted, and the area roped off so the little neighbor trolls don't tromp it to death.

That's probably one thing I haven't mentioned. Apparently our yard is the perfect spot to cut through to the street behind us, so all the kids walk, ride bikes and sometimes scooter through... it's very irritating. But because eight year olds intimidate me I haven't said anything. Instead we roped off the freshly planted area. In lieu of an amiable six inches off the ground, we've got it set at a less than friendly, third grader esophagus height. That should get the message across.

Today I awoke to discover I had muscles in my back that I didn't know existed. Apparently, shoveling the dirt yesterday really gave my back a work out, or I'm getting old. But I sucked it up, had a quick bite to eat and laced up my running shoes. Ben and I headed out and had a great eight mile run. I even got to use my fuel belt (which I really got more for looks than practicality).

Again, not opting for the couch, we returned, put our work clothes back on and headed to Lowe's. We bought 640 pounds of top soil for the garden and headed back to start, and finish, phase two: construct bed and fill with soil. This wasn't bad, took a little bit of finessing to get it level, but once we did it looked great. While Ben finished putting the last screws into the wooden planks I began hauling all 640 pounds of dirt from around the front of the house. I know, I'm super-human.

So, to sum up the weekend, I ate birthday cake, ran eight miles and proceeded to carry more than one quarter ton of dirt to the back of the house. No wonder I feel like I got run over by a Mack truck. What's on the agenda for next weekend? 10 miles and 600 more lbs of dirt for the garden. No, I'm not kidding. Can't wait!