Yard Work

For those who haven't been to our house yet, we have an awesome yard. It is super big, with huge trees, a large garden area, and tons of grass. We knew when we bought the house that it would require a lot of yard work, and we were more than ok with that. We both enjoy working out in the yard and knew that it would give us something to do. 

I love this time of year. I love seeing the leaves change color, feeling the temperature drop, and enjoying the last bit of warmth before winter comes. But one part of fall that isn't necessarily my favorite is raking leaves. And with as many trees as we have, there were a TON of leaves.

Those pictures were taken after I had already raked once.

Although raking leaves isn't exactly my favorite thing to do, I actually quite enjoyed doing it this year. Blake would just sit in the stroller and watch, while Will would do his best to help out as much as possible. 

It was a great way for me to get out of the house and pass the time with the kids behaving.

Will had a great time helping me rake and gather the leaves.

I gave him a little bucket so he could fill it with leaves to dump into the garbage.

His favorite was getting inside the garbage can to stomp down the leaves.

While our garden did have a few things growing in it, it has a lot of work needed to get it to where we would like it.

Fortunately for us, many of our neighbors are excellent gardeners and have been willing to help us out a lot. They have offered advice, tools, etc and we have been so appreciative.

I wasn't entirely sure what we were going to do with all of our leaves, but I figured we would be filling our garbage can with them all winter long trying to get rid of them.

This was just one of our piles. We had about 4 more in the back yard and several in the front yard.

Luckily our neighbor offered to help us out. He has an attachment for his lawn mower that mulches the leaves. He also had a garden tiller that he let us borrow. So while Lance tilled our garden, he worked on the leaves and would spread them over the tilled dirt behind Lance.

 And the whole time, Will was right there with them trying to help. 

 He loves watching his daddy work. He also loves helping.

 This is what our yard looked like after our neighbor left. 

 And this is what our garden looked like. This picture doesn't do it justice. There is some great soil back there and it will be perfect for planting next year.

Crazy enough, by the next day, our yard needed to be raked yet again.