landscaping yay

In all the craziness over the room I forgot to post about the landscaping. The whole family were here most of the day Sunday and basically finished the job. Peggy came back on Monday and put down mulch, but I wasn't here because I'm always out all day with meetings and my radio show on Mondays. Then Tuesday (as I think I did post) I ran into her at Home Depot and paid her.

The yard looks amazing. It looks as good as when we moved in. Actually better, because they took out the big cypress tree by the driveway, which I've always hated, and trimmed the trees out front which have always needed it.

My disappointments are few and minor, but this is my space to bitch and moan so I guess I will. First, they only dug up a few shrubs; most big things (including the cypress) they just cut down to the ground. I guess I should have realized that digging out stumps would take longer and cost more, so they wouldn't do it unless we specified. Second, I thought they were going to mulch that whole long area along the driveway, outside the fence, but they just mulched around individual plants. No big deal; I've already arranged with my friend David to get a load of mulch in his truck.

Those quibbles aside, I'm really happy with their work. It's like living in a whole different place, as I'm sure you can imagine from the photos. The dogs seem confused but happy. They've been spending their time outside wandering around the perimeter of the yard, checking things out.

So now I have a yard that looks nice, but is pretty bare. I need to get to work with mulching and planting right away, to keep it from getting overgrown again. Which brings me back to lack of time, the problem I had in the first place. Coincidentally, a couple of weeks ago I hit my 8 week slump on my exercise program. This is a pattern for me: I throw myself into an exercise program, work really hard at it, then after about 8 weeks I start to think "why am I doing this? it's so narcissistic and takes so much time" and usually quit.

So I had stopped going to the gym about two weeks ago, and was feeling pretty guilty about it. Then last night it occurred to me that the four days I was working on the room were a way better workout than I would have gotten at the gym. Plus I had a beautiful room for my trouble, instead of a series of endless, pointless sessions on an elliptical machine.

I'm thinking about trying to use my exercise time on yardwork. Including travel time it had been an hour a day, sometimes more, 5-6 days a week. Rather than trying to go out and entirely do a major project in one go, I'll just do a little each day: plant one thing, pull up some bamboo, etc. I probably won't get as much exercise as if I were going to the gym -- there's no cardio to be found in gardening that I know of -- but it's heavy duty work so I think I'll still get some benefit out of it. Anyway I'm going to give it a couple of weeks & see how I feel about my physical condition and my yard's condition. If it's not working out, I'll renew my gym membership (which coincidentally expired at the end of last week because of the term starting). But if I could stick with this until my next 8 week slump, I'd get a heck of a lot done.