What a weekend

Wherein I tried to do all the things, by myself, while under a deadline.
Saturday morning I woke up bright and early and drove out to Uhaul to pick up the truck. I had a deadline to hit - the brush dump closes at 1 on Saturdays, and I wanted to make the most of my quality time with the truck. I was able to average 1 load an hour, so 4 loads of debris gone. The debris included:
• All of the trimmings from the back yard, which included a lot of blackberry canes, and black raspberry vines (1 load),

After the pickup - Trust me, the edge of the woods was encroaching a lot more before my Thursday night brush cutting fiesta.

• All of the pile from the front yard that was here when I bought the place, which included lots of old lilac trunks, wet leaves, 1 broken leaf rake, 1 Nikon lens cover, and 2 green and blue Nerf darts (1 load),

Now you see it.

Now you don't.
That was one full 8' pickup bed of sodden leaves.
(And some sort of rodent nests.)

• 2/3 of the giant pile from in front of the shed (2 loads. A third would have finished it.)

Before. I forgot to grab an "after" - I'll update it later.

 I did my best to avoid the Dreaded Poison Ivy. I intended to go out fully suited, but it was already so warm, my choices were to potentially itch, or drop from heat. I put on the long rubber gloves and long sleeved shirt and just hoped a lot. I also washed my hands and face between dump runs.
So far *knock wood* it seems to have worked.
Also, literally pouring your own sweat out of the rubber gloves was... gross.
The witching hour came all too soon, and I had to bring the truck back. I made so much progress in such a short period of time, I was really bummed it couldn't have gone on longer. But the Town of Grafton forced me to pace myself. Maybe it's for the best.
Then I mowed my lawn.

Next up was to fix the holes in the floor of my basement. I have a radon system that relies on positive pressure to suck the radon out from under the floor before it filters up through the concrete and into the house. When they installed the system, the back of the basement was still covered in about 2-6" of sand and dirt. When I cleaned it out, I discovered that there were a number of rectangular holes down into the ground, likely left over from a long-forgotten coal room that was present when the floor was poured. I can't have holes in the positive pressure system, so I got to play with cement patch.

I tried to put my initials in it, but the fast patch stuff didn't like to hold details.

It seems to have set up nicely.

Sunday dawned rainy, so I did a bunch of chores and errands - laundry, grocery, cleaning and tidying the house. I have to say, I never thought (back in college) when I hoarded quarters in order to make clean socks that I would still be hoarding quarters 20 years later.
It cleared up that afternoon, and I decided (on a whim) that after having only mowed the lawn twice, that mowing the hill behind the house was for the birds. It needed to be not-mowable. I stopped at High Hill Farm in Westborough and picked up a bunch of creeping phlox, some lemon thyme, and some odd fluffy thing. I got home, put all the groceries away, and started turning the hill into a flower bed.
Turning hills into flower beds is harder than flat ground. There's more odd bending and stretching. But by 6:30 on Sunday evening, I had a good half of the bed turned.

Before.

After. About 2/3 there.

I need to figure out how I'm going to edge/hold the dirt back. I put some old bricks Alicia and I found around the bottom for now, but I'm not 100% sold on it. I have to stop by Home Depot for some mulch so I'll think about it. I've seen some neat ideas using planks and/or pipes hammered into the ground. I have some planks from the basement clean out that I could cut up and repurpose...

That was that.
This week, I'll try to finish the flower bed, and then get to work on the upstairs bedrooms. The Ben Moore sale is on!