surprise!

Well well, this week had some fun surprises for me.  First, Mark made the discovery that some bushes in our back yard are actually.... blackberry bushes!  He was trimming them back a few days ago [because they were growing out-of-control] and noticed that they had berries on them.  He came in and told me that we had berries we could eat on the bushes and my first thought was nah... they must be poisonous or something. [side note: when you were little, didn't you think every berry on every bush was poisonous? like if you ate it, you would no doubt become so sick you would die?]  well two nights ago he is outside spraying (the poison ivy, sigh) and comes back in to tell me that he ate one of the berries [my internal reaction: what??! you are so going to die!].  I go outside to investigate and sure enough, they look like blackberries.  I come back inside and google image "blackberry bush."  yes, yes. these do appear to be the same as what we have growing in our yard.

 

So I deem them safe enough and pull one off the branch.  and eat it.  without even rinsing it off.  seven-year-old me was a little freaked out, but grown up me thought they tasted fantastic.  So I picked some more.

That's got to be at least $2 worth of blackberries from the grocery store, right?? Growing for free!  Right in my backyard!  Thankyouverymuch previous owner.

The second big surprise happened yesterday after work, when an ordinary after school meeting turned into Oprah's Favorite Things in which our Head of School gave everyone one of these:

"You get an iPad!  You get an iPad!"

And we all got $100 iTunes gift cards to buy anything we want.  For real. Anything.  I can spend it all on One Direction mp3's if I want [I won't..].  It was a fun day and it got me super jazzed to start using these in the classroom next year.  Because, whoa, I'll be in the classroom next year.  In just 3 more months!

There's a first time for everything

Well, I managed 29 years, 6 months and 5 days of life without ever mowing a lawn.  Thanks to having an older brother, I never had to do yard work growing up.  I unloaded the dishwasher plenty of times, but never had to mow the lawn or take out the trash.  Those were boy chores.  I couldn't avoid the trash once I started renting an apartment after college, but the lawn mower?  That I still managed to escape, thanks to getting married and hanging on to my boys-do-the-yard-work card.

But then, Mark went and had to have knee surgery.  And two and a half weeks later, we were becoming those people on our street.  The ones who don't mow their grass.  So I did what any girl who has never even turned on a lawn mower would do  Made my husband take pictures of me and the lawn mower.

And then, I mowed the lawn.  Front and back.  Dare I say it was almost fun?  I concentrated super hard on making the straight lines and realized it was a lot like vacuuming.  And i love vacuuming!  I told Mark I thought it was pretty fun and said he'd check back with me in August, when it's 109 degrees outside.  To which I flashed my boys-do-the-yard-work card and went back inside.

When it rains...

What would make ACL surgery even more fun?  Poison ivy!  All over your legs!  Under your bandages and on your ankles where it conveniently rubs against the machine you have to use on your leg for eight hours a day!

Ouchers.

Turns out, we have poison ivy growing in our backyard.  In our flower beds, actually.  Because that makes total sense.  Mark mowed and edged the yard the day before surgery.  He also took the weed eater and skimmed over some weed/plant/overgrown piles along the back fence.  Skip forward three days.  Surgery is over, he's laid up in bed, and suddenly he has this red rash all over his legs.  His mom, who was still staying with us, thinks he's either allergic to the padding on the machine he uses for rehab, or he has developed a heat rash.  Sunday evening, my parents stop by with cookies for Mark.  My mom takes one look at his legs and says POISON IVY. [She lives in the country.  She's had poison ivy before.  Heck, she was stung by a scorpion last week!]  So I grab my phone and start taking pictures of random plants in the backyard (without touching anything) and a few Google Image searches later it is confirmed.

"Leaves of three, let it be" - Well we learned that a little too late!

So now he's on a steroid pack and I'm washing the sheets every day.  Oh my.

Hey, I CAN do yardwork!

This weekend, I volunteered to help Mark out in the yard, since he has the gimp knee and all that jazz.  We've always assumed without actually saying it that he gets to "decorate" the outside of the house, and I get to do the inside.  So he does all the yard work.  He had just started to lay mulch in the front flower beds the morning before that fateful soccer injury, so that project has been on hold for a couple weeks.  Since he has surgery this week, we decided to finish it up this weekend before he was really out of commission.  I don't have a picture of the garden work we did, but I'll take one later today and add it.  We got about 85% of the garden finished before we ran out of weed mat (I have no idea what this stuff is actually called? Fabric that you lay under the mulch to prevent weeds from growing in the garden.  Mark claims it will last 25 years!).  So we still have a hole of un-mulched garden, but perhaps we will finish that up today? 

Yesterday evening, Mark decided he would chop down this bush/tree thing in our front yard, since it wasn't all that attractive and was growing with pretty reckless abandon.  It took all of thirty minutes before the bush/tree was nothing but a pile of brush laying on the sidewalk!  I helped supervise and photograph this project ;)