My Brother Is Better Than Yours!

 The past week has been incredibly busy over here at Chateau Eden.  My brother came up to visit on Thursday; planning to work off his phone bill in the yard.  Saturday we had a small party with friends to celebrate my birthday, Sunday my brother and I went out to see The Avengers, and Monday afternoon he headed back home.

He may never come back after all the work I made him do.

Strawberry bed and path before the work.

Path AFTER the work.

Shiny new gravel path.

Other side of the shiny new gravel path.

 It may not look like much in the pictures but we weeded 70 ft. of path (that was seriously overgrown) laid out landscape fabric and added 3/4 of a ton of pea gravel to the whole thing.  We also weeded and graveled the landing below the front porch steps, but I didn't get a picture of that.  It made a huge difference, the old path was looking so shoddy that clearing it and putting in the new one made the whole yard look fabulous.

Cherry tree

 After all the path laying was done we decided it was high time for the bed of the trailer to be replaced.  Dry rot had done its damage years ago and the holes just kept being covered up with chunks of plywood.  So we removed the dry rotted wood and replaced it with a shiny new sheet of plywood, and the trailer is like new again.  Which is a good thing since I plan to use it to get more bark mulch for the front yard!

Finally my brother and I also cleaned out the second shed, which I had been dreading because of all the spiders.  Now everything we're keeping is up on pallets, everything we aren't keeping is in the trailer waiting to go to the dump, and there is not only room to easily get the lawn mower in and out, but also to park the motorcycle over the winter.  Score one for me!

Garden bed 1

On a final note, I took the above picture yesterday morning and was thinking there hadn't been much growth in the garden considering how nice the weather has been.  Then I went back out to pick a few things for dinner later in the evening and it was like every plant out there had doubled in size since the morning!  The cabbages are starting to put out the first of their head leaves, the broccoli and cauliflower are ready to pop up the central stalk that will become the head, the lettuces have gotten so large you can't see a trace of the soil under them, even the chard were finally large enough for a small harvest.  I am so happy to see things finally catching up.


I also had at least three people in the past month ask if I'm growing the pumpkins on top of the shed again this year.  Lol, apparently they were a hit with everyone!