My second occupation if...

there weren't snakes in this world! I love to do landscaping, but I am deathly afraid of snakes. So because I work in a school, I have several "friends" from school that love snakes. So I enlist them to be my snake hunters, so they hunt while work behind them. Last summer we landscaped the other side of the house, so I decided to take on the other side...the sun side. Nothing grew on that side of the house and if it did it was the most enormous sized weeds you had ever seen. A "real" nice view when coming from our house on that side. On this side of the garage (which is in our back yard) was what I previously thought of as our "snake" weed garden. I never went back there...for fear that there were several snakes living in the peony/weed garden. I should also mention that two of Casey's 7 hives were also housed in that snake weed garden...so it was double trouble. If you got scared by a snake it would cause ruckus in the hive...not a good situation to be in:)

Anyway...back to my side job. This is all the "pretty" that was on this side of the house. After two nice days (and bubbles, sprinkler, long naps, and popsicles) I was able to conquer the south side of our house by myself...while Casey was gone. Here I had a problem at the corner, because the center of our house was not symmetrical...so now there is a hanging plant to help even out the front of the house. I had to join the black edging (that I put in last year) with the new edging I was putting in this year...can you tell where I joined it?
Yes it does buldge out...but I did it with the start of the house and ending of the porch...at the time of design (while digging) it was a good idea...but now it looks like I really messed up. I guess you can call it my signature mark:)
This picture is from our back yard. Where there is dirt/weeds is where our beloved dog once lived until two weeks ago. Bullseye was a great dog, but too much for me to take care of. Thanks to Craig's list we found a great new family for her. She gets to sleep in one of the two teenage boy's room and play fetch and tag with their other dog. Yes I did shed a few tears for her, but it is all better now and we have (or will have) a decent back yard that isn't filled with junk plugging up the holes of the kennel. **
**Side note: After removing her kennel and attempting to shape the area up for grass, I dug out 16 bricks, one cement block, three stakes, a bike, a hive top, a battery, two hive boxes, and several misc. balls. All of which were blocking holes to her kennel so she didn't get out. Do you think it was time for Bullseye to find a new family...I think so!

As you can see...we still have plenty left to do. We will be installing underground sprinklers soon, so we will hopefully go from mud to grass (hopefully). I will have to blog a before of our yard. YUCK is all I can say now:)