I've done a few things in the yard when the weather has been nicer.

I know I'm being a bit of a wimp. The temperature today is forecast to hit 54°F, but creeping on noon, my phone is still reporting only 47°F outside. I don't want to do the things I need or want to do outside. It's suppose to break into the upper 60s over the weekend, so hopefully between sports I can get something done. The forecast also calls for warmer weather for much of the next week, so maybe we're getting close.

Some animal tore up my front yard, probably digging for grubs, so I did patch that earlier in the week, when it was warm. In the past I would have pulled out a shovel and the Garden Weasel and taken to it, but this year I decided to go a bit deeper than that allows, so I picked up a Ryobi cultivator to help dig through the compacted topsoil. There were a dozen or more divots throughout the front yard, which I turned into four patches of various size to give the grass a less patchy look. I think I did a pretty good job of tearing apart the ground and blending the damage in with the healthier grass. I mixed some grass seed in and spread it generously on top before raking some soil on top of the seed. The cultivator didn't do a great job of tearing up the grass patches, leaving grassy clumps on the top of it all, but I'm hopeful they'll either recover or break apart as the other grass grows.

We've had a patch of grass that hasn't recovered well in the back yard. During the pandemic we got a giant inflatable pool that we set up right there. The weight or plastic or eventual deluge of water tortured that bit of work. Plus the dogs cut from the sidewalk on their way around the garage, and the kids tear through when the do play in the back yard (the adults tend to hang out on the deck instead of the grass), so it's put up with a lot of traffic. I've hit it with the Garden Weasel most springs and tried to augment the soil with additional seed. Two years ago I got a good blooming of clover going in the area, but it was a rouse as the clover spread wider from fewer clumps, covering the dirt, but not filling it. Since I have a new cultivator, I took to that bit of yard, too.

That was not as easy. Possibly exacerbated by the additional traffic and debris of rebuilding our garage last fall, and having a bunch of garage stuff stowed outside on that part of the lawn, and the extra traffic as we closed of part of the yard, the soil there was particularly compacted, and the cultivator couldn't find a footing to dig in, merely scraping the surface. I've got a mattock, which is like a pick axe but with a flat blade on one end instead of a pointy bit, so I pulled that out and used it to crack apart the first few inches, The area ended up being about an 8x10-foot chunk of dirt that I had to bust apart, and then spent a lot of time with the cultivator breaking the chunks into loose soil. I augmented this with a 50-pound bag of potting soil that's been waiting to be used for a few years, and mixed in an overabundance of grass seed, before covering the area with more seed and raking it in and flattening it out. I covered the large area with the tomato cages to give it a chance to germinate and start to grow grass without dogs or people cutting over it.

In a couple of weeks we'll be able to see if that grass seed takes.

I've also made a couple passes picking up what seems like enough sticks to build a whole tree, pulling some of the earlier weeds, and covering the old planting beds with large cardboard sheets to prepare for digging them up. I also took a branch lopper to some of the tree sprouts that shoot out of the many stumps that are inconveniently located under the fences. Fantastically, I don't see any attempting to grow between the garages, so maybe the excavation for that pulled that stump out.

I hope to be able to take some of the dirt from the old planting beds to fill in the groove around the garage foundation. I had assumed they would fill that in before they called the garage finished, but evidently that's "landscaping," and not part of returning things to the way they were. It'll be a bunch of shovels filled with dirt I already have, and then trying to encourage the grass to grow and trying to keep the weeds from returning. Thus the cardboard. I also covered that cardboard with some wood and the bigger sticks that were in the yard to help keep them from blowing away.

I also have one raised garden box to build. I got one done last summer, and then torqued my back and gave up on outside work. I need to cut and combine the lumber in the right ways. Where I want to put the box is currently a pile of dirt covered in cardboard held down with a bunch of sticks and other things. I need to move those sticks and things out of the way so I can remove the cardboard and get the dirt away from where I want to put the box. The plan is to then put the box in place, trying to get it level enough, put some of the sticks and detritus in on the bottom, and then fill it with the dirt. There's still some room in the box already in place (which is covered with another slab of cardboard held down with more sticks and wood) so I can put more dirt in there, too, hopefully filling both boxes to nearly the top. Any excess dirt will be put around the boxes, hopefully giving a little grade away from the house, before I layer some mulch on top of that to hold off the weeds that want to grow there.

Between this pile where the new boxes go and the other old planting boxes, I should be able to fill the areas around the planting boxes, garage, and fill in any dips throughout the yard, ending up with nice flat or grade yard, as is appropriate for the spot.

Then I can throw some tomatoes, peppers, and a few other things in the raised boxes. They are on the south side of the house, which gets full sun about 14 hours of the day during the summer, so we should have plenty coming out. In the dozen or so other containers we have, I'm hoping to grow some potatoes, kale, carrots, and maybe some spinach and strawberries, if they're tall enough to keep the rabbits out.

Almost out of the blue, the missus has decided we need to replace our deck with a patio. When we remodeled the house, they left us without back stairs, giving us a cobbled together wood platform as a placeholder. I built a giant 16x16-foot deck with a smaller 8x8-foot bit right out the back door, so it's an easy step out of the door onto the deck, which hovers about 20-inches above the ground. Now she'd like to have a similar bit right outside the door, but then steps going down to a ground-level paver or concrete patio. The deck is a little weathered, but it is also over 15 years old. A good power wash, maybe some sanding or replacing a few worn planks, and a sealing treatment (which we never got to because of decisions related to colors) could get a bit more time out. There are rabbits that either live or at least traverse the yard under the deck, which intrigues the dogs, but they can't get through the lattice I've put around it, mostly to keep them from going under the deck chasing rabbits or laying in the shade.

And there's been a bit of movement clearing the basement of its overwhelming collection of junk, too! I have a pretty generous pile of not useful stuff, for sure. There must be ten or fifteen old computers, in whole or part, and at least a handful of big CRT monitors that have been replaced with flat screens. And all the cables and other bits and bobs that go with old computers. I can take a lot of it to the recycle place, most for free, but I need to get it out to the garage and into the Jeep first. I've gone down a number of times and moved things into more "no" and fewer "maybe" piles, but they're still in the basement.

I'm hoping we can get back to a big empty space, but the missus has ideas of kind of finishing the basement to give the kids a hangout, as we're entering teenage social stuff. We can't really finish the basement, as the ceiling is too low to count for finished square footage, but we can figure out how to clean the walls, cover the ceiling (again) and floor, and ensure there are lights and outlets enough to make the space comfortable for hanging out. I think it'd be a great space for a dry bar (kid friendly, of course) and gaming table, with some social seating around the edges. She's thinking a whole electronic "kid cave," maybe adding a wall and doors to separate the machine areas from the play area.

Of course, rather than spend a ton of money, I'd really rather clean the house and move away to where it's summer all the time, but that's a whole other thing.