{p,h,f,r} The Backyard Edition

{pretty}

Our backyard is looking very pretty, if I do say so myself.  There is so much coming up and blooming.  After our first real winter in several years, this spring has just been glorious. We've set out several bird feeders and created some little secret pathways for the boys and with all the flowers it feels a little magical back there.

{happy}

The kids still just love the swingset, and David would like everyone to know that he has finally mastered the pumping of the legs.  Really.  Everyone.  The mailman, the boys next door, the random lady at the commissary....

{funny}

And yes, those are my children frolicking on the urine-soaked mattress of despair.  I'd like to say they were playing the "jump over the dog pee" game but I'm pretty sure they weren't bothering with that.  The mattress is now residing on our back porch until the bulk trash pick up day this weekend, once again making us the classiest family in the neighborhood.

{real}

So, now that it's spring and the yard is great and we have the amazing playset to occupy them, the big boys have been spending a lot of unsupervised time in the yard--which is usually fine.  Sometimes though I check on them and find that they have clearly been up to no good.

Me:  What happened to the willow tree?
John:  Henry did it.
Henry:  No I didn't! [insert whiny shriek here] David did it!
Me:  David?
David:  Well, we were playing whomping willow so I needed to make it whomp........
Me:  Oh, well of course then that makes sense.

Don't worry, the tree has been re-staked and will hopefully survive its first (and probably not its last) Reintjes sons attack.  And also I think we're going to simmer down with the Harry Potter audio books for a while.  


I hope your Springs are shaping up to be just as pretty and your porches just as classy as ours are!  And, as always, don't forget to pop over to Like Mother, Like Daughter to see even more captured contentment.

On Making the Backyard Amazing

We spent this past weekend with Grandma and Grandpa Haigh turning our backyard from a muddy mess into a children's paradise.  It all started with 10 cubic yards of mulch delivered to our driveway by a real live dump truck.

I think it's safe to say that the delivery was was the highlight of the children's day.  Do you know how much mulch is in 10 cubic yards?

I didn't either.

It's a lot of mulch.

Luckily we had lots of helpers to move it to the backyard.  And the front yard.  And the side yard.  Pretty much anywhere and everywhere you could put mulch.

Of course, as much fun as having nicely mulched flower beds is, the most popular addition to the backyard is the gigantic playset Grandma and Grandpa brought.  They hunted it down on Craigslist, dissasembled it, fixed it up and painted it and then brought it all the way down to us from Michigan and put it all back together again.  I cannot even begin to describe how amazing this thing is.  We never could have afforded something like this new and I'm pretty sure we never would have bought one used either.  As much as Chris liked the idea of me finding a playset on Craigslist, he never seemed to like the reality of actually taking one apart and reassembling it in our yard by himself :)

That makes sense though, everything's better when you have someone to help.

Especially when that someone is adorable.

It probably goes without saying that the kids love it.

I love that I now have a fenced in backyard that the boys can play contentedly in without me that doesn't involve them solely digging in the mud.  Well, play as contentedly as any child of mine ever plays anyway.  And there is still a fair bit of mud play, but it's no longer solely mud play.

Right now, they call it "the fort" but I'm sure it will be many things this summer--a fort, a clubhouse, a castle, a ship, whatever their little imaginations can dream up.

The only thing we changed was to board up the end of the tunnel section to make it safer for smaller climbers.  The big boys weren't exactly thrilled with that turn of events but they've gotten used to it.  Mostly because Chris promised some sort of weapon system mounted to that section to appease them.

I'm hoping the rock wall will lose its appeal once John Michael realized it leads to nowhere.

Grandpa and Chris had the playset up so fast we had time to tackle a bunch of other projects too like planting all the vegetables I bought on a whim at the commissary and the pansies languishing next to the house that I got for our window boxes.  Grandpa also power washed our back screened in porch and did the first coat of white spray paint on the sad yellow wicker chairs that came with the porch.

So much better, right?

I'm so excited for this warm weather and days spent mostly out of doors.   Now if I can just miraculously find a patio table and chairs in our price range (i.e. really, really, really low) then our little backyard oasis will be nearly perfect.

I'm thinking teak.

It could happen :)

I hope all your Springs are shaping up as nicely as ours is!  

{p,h,f,r} Flower Garden Edition

{Pretty}

Our front flower beds are a little ridiculous.  The wildflowers we planted have come in in patches and the "dwarf" zinnias are standing four feet tall, front and center blocking all other plants from view.  At least they bring in the butterflies so we'll forgive them for their unrestrained growth for now.  Chris says we should only ever plant zinnias because they are the only thing we can reliably grow--and grow to monster proportions apparently.  I think he's just flower-bitter because our sunflowers had such a poor showing this year and the wildflowers he was in charge of never amounted to much except a wild grass patch.

{Happy}

This is not the best picture of my Grandmother's Flower Garden masterpiece--the colors are much prettier than I could get in my thunderstorm darkened living room--but it does make me happy.  Since I took this picture last weekend I've actually finished assembling two and a half more rows of flowers and I only have one and half more rows to go.  It's crazy to think that I've spent six weeks working on such a tiny quilt!  I thought I would be done piecing by now but I keep having to stop to make more white hexies.  Apparently I severely underestimated how many I would need.  I'm hoping to finish piecing the top today so I can take it to the local quilt shop tomorrow and beg someone to give me tips on how to bind it.  I think I want to leave the edges rounded like this or this as opposed to squaring the whole thing up but I can't quite decide.  Then there's the question of whether or not to add a border--but of course that would require making even more hexies.....

If anyone has advice I would love to hear it!

{Funny}

If John has something that he considers to be his he will defend it with his life--well, he will defend it by making the loudest shrieking noise you have ever heard.  It used to be a very effective tactic and does still work on unfamiliar little girls but it's losing it's effectiveness on his brothers.  Here, after several attempts by his brothers to eat out of the communal pretzel bag, he decided it was time to exit the playground and enjoy his spoils alone by the far off tree, keeping a sharp eye out for any invading parties of course.

{Real}

This is the entirety of our carrot harvest this year.

Professional gardeners we are not.  At least our tomatoes and peppers were plentiful so we aren't complete failures.  The whole garden is almost ready to be pulled out--which is about right for our inhospitable climate.  Maybe we'll be better Northern Virginia gardeners than too-hot-to-survive-in-Florida gardeners.......


In the mean time, don't forget to hop over to Like Mother, Like Daughter for even more captured contentment :)