Mary May Quite Contrary

I can't remember having a more productive weekend than the one I just had. Sometimes on my train ride home on Friday afternoons, I make a list of things I hope to get done over the weekend. This weekend's list was long, but I managed to cross off most of it. I cannot adequately explain to you how much I love crossing stuff off my to do list. (Also, posting a blog, now is totally crossed off.)

This weekend was a mix of fun things and not so fun, but oh so necessary things. For example, in the fun column was dinner with friends and Skyping with two ladies on opposite coasts that I don't see as much as I'd like. In the necessary column was mailing our rent check, cleaning and taking photos of our old condo for a rental listing.

For the past few months I have slowly been putting our office together. It's the first room in the house that I've really redone. This weekend Mike and I hung some shelves and a white board. Putting those things up felt like one of the last things we needed to do in this room.

Sneak peak! More to come of this before and after. It's quite a change.

This weekend we also checked off one big to do item that we'd been working for a few weeks.

When we moved into the house it already had a vegetable garden, but it wasn't full of the kinds of vegetables we wanted. It yielded some cucumbers, and a few tomatoes but it was mostly filled with flavorless banana peppers.

This year we decided to start from scratch. We tore out any existing roots, removed and relaid the pavers, tilled the soil and laid an entire new fresh bed of dirt for all our carefully chosen fruits and veggies. It was a decent amount of work and we spread it over three weekends. Last weekend we picked out a bunch of veggies and herbs from a local market, but as we were driving home I got a frost advisory on my phone for that night. It didn't seem like the best time to plant. So we, and our plants, waited.

Today and the coming week, however, presented much better weather. It's not going to freeze. In fact it's supposed to be rainy and hotter than average. So hopefully our little veggies will start taking root.

These are the strawberries. We also have cucumbers, eggplant, tomatoes, carrots, and lettuce.

Aside from planting, we also put up a fence. We have bunnies and squirrels occasionally scurrying through our yard. It's not them that we were worried about though. We have a much bigger pest on our hands.

Why our dog likes to wallow in the mud so much, I'll never know. But boy does he ever. By cutting off his access to dirt, it will hopefully keep him cleaner and increase our plants chances of survival.

As you can see, the fence is already doing it's job.

He wants in so bad.

So overall I definitely put this weekend in the win column. However, the next weekend is also shaping up to be pretty awesome. I'm scheduled for a cut and color with my favorite stylist next Saturday, and on Sunday I'll be driving to Michigan to see these friends and meet their new daughter. My cameras will of course be in tow, and I cannot wait to take pictures of them all because, one, they are so photogenic and I love them, and two, I ordered a new camera lens on Friday. It should arrive in a couple days.

Wow. Next weekend cannot come fast enough.