Spring has sprung....already?

It seems a little early to be getting out to do yardwork, but honestly, I'm not complaining.

The peonies are starting to poke through the dirt, which makes me extremely happy. Some of these initially came from my aunt's house, and were transplanted to my parents' house, and then were transported from Pennsylvania to Kansas and were transplanted at my old house, and then were transplanted to this house. They have a lot of miles on them, and I don't want to lose them. My aunt died in 2000, so even if I kill off every other plant that I own (highly likely), I don't want to kill the peonies. Aunt Doris would probably roll over in her grave and pop me upside the head if I killed them - I'm not taking any chances. Just sayin'.

OK, yeah, they're pretty and all that. But do they really have to grow everywhere? Seriously - they're in the middle of the yard. Not in the flowerbed. I've tried to dig them up and they're impossible to get rid of - trust me, I've tried. I don't even really like them in the flowerbed because they just seem to take over everything. If they'd just stay in one happy little patch, they wouldn't annoy me so much.

And of course, what would springtime be without these? Unlike most people, I really don't mind them. I think it's because our yard was full of dandelions when I was growing up, and seeing them just reminds me of a time when things were so much simpler than they are now.

But anyway, I got out there today and just started clearing out the flowerbeds. They were full of leaves and garbage and dead sticks and whatnot. I didn't really weed, except for the one bed of irises, which had been totally overtaken by some horrendous weed - but luckily it was pretty easy to pull. I didn't do a stellar job on any of it - just basically enough to make a difference and to make it look a little less ugly.

So, it looks better out there. Tomorrow's mission is going to be to bag up the 87 bags' worth of leaves in the area where our picnic table is and get those out to the landfill - that's going to be a fun, dirty, nasty, itchy job. But, for the most part, once it's done, it's done. Any leftovers after tomorrow can get raked out into the yard and chopped up with the mower when it's finally time to bust that bad boy out of the garage. That's assuming that we actually get rain this year - I think I mowed a grand total of 3 times last year. Maybe 4.

I did actually finally bust out the sewing machine tonight too and got some work done on a couple of projects. I have way too many projects and ideas either in my head, started, or almost finished, and I just need to get to work on all of them and get them done, one way or another.

I also have a couple of parts that I need to get for the van to fix a couple of annoying things - started getting prices on those today, but found out that I can get the one online for about half of the price of the place here in town - so next time I get money I get to do that. Woohoo.

I'll just keep making lists and working on them in my spare time. Ha. Glad I got so much sleep over the past few days!