It's practically the end of the summer and our yard looks terrible.  Despite the wads of cash we dumped into the lawn earlier this summer with fertilizing and ant spraying and weed spraying and crabgrass spraying, the lawn has been in a state of semi-neglect all summer.  We had such good intentions.  Marty had visions of golf course-shades of green, lush grass he wouldn't mind us walking in barefoot (he doesn't do barefoot, but the rest of us do).  Then, I don't know, I guess it got busy.  And all of a sudden, the lawn looked REALLY bad.  The sort-of-green grass we had going turned super brown in patches.  Crab grass started sprouting up all over the place.  Acorns started dropping at alarming rates and we had to pull out the snow shovels to clear paths in the grass so that we wouldn't slip-n-slide when taking out the garbage.

And then the rains began.  In the past week the grass has grown at double its normal pace.  It's green, but only in the areas where we shoveled and raked acorns.  And, of course, where the crab grass grows.  So instead of looking like the golf course of dreams, we look like an ugly patchwork quilt.  This wouldn't really bother me so much except that the rest of our yard seems to have fallen into a similar state of half-disrepair.  I managed to weed only half of the flower bed this summer.  Once.  I worked really hard to keep the rock landscaping weed-free for quite awhile, then it went crazy without my constant vigilance.  The trim has fallen off of our garage door.  And my potted plants kicked the bucket.

Last week I decided that I'd had enough.  We raked acorns every night, filling half of a garbage can and making it so heavy that I could barely move it.  I pulled weeds.  I replaced the deceased potted plants.  We cleaned up the sandbox and gave all of the kid trucks a car wash.  I moved the old, unused bird bath to the backyard and set it up on the patio. 

The kids and I went inside and admired our newly spruced up patio.  It looked so good that birds started arriving.  Within minutes, a dozen pretty yellow birds perched in the tree that sits next to the patio.


One by one, the birds hopped down to splash in the bird bath.  They took turns trying to drink out of our bird feeder (which I obviously missed filling during the patio overhaul):


I still have miles of weeds to pull, but we're off to a good start.  Now, if it would ever stop raining, we could get back out there and enjoy it.  I mean, get back to work.