Manual Labor Saturday

This time I was smart: I took my Claratin BEFORE spending hours in the yard. Not that it helped all that much. Tell me: Why did I kick my butt in the gym Saturday morning? Spending most of Saturday doing manual labor was probably exercise enough! First, Michael and struggled to install his new Yakima Skybox. This was after struggling for over an hour in the REI parking lot Friday night to get it to work right. Grrr…

But it finally worked. And it will be great for camping gear this summer (and snowshoeing gear in the winter). I fixed us nachos for lunch. There was absolutely no nutritional value in our lunch. Well, maybe fiber in the refried black beans. 😛 (Chopped jalapenos, red onion, black olives, yellow bell peppers plus salsa, bean dip, sour cream. YUM)

Then the hours of manual labor continued. This time? The front yard. To combat the never-ending weed pulling, we put down weed killer, this tarp-like liner and then covered everything with bark. The first batch was 6 bags of bark. Then we had to go back to the store for 8 more bags. The front yard looks soooo much better!

Hauling around huge, heavy bags of bark all afternoon was definitely a workout. Seriously. If you’re trying to get fit and hate going to the gym, I suggest having a garden. It’s hours of labor. I was sweaty by the time we were done. It felt so good to accomplish something though!

BEFORE:

Not Very Pretty

Liner to Prevent WEEDS!!

AFTER:

SO PRETTY!!

Doesn’t it look so much better?? The weeds better stay away too. I’m on a mission to not have to pull any weeds, dammit.

It felt so good to finish one project. There’s a few more spots in the front we need to put bark down on but it will have to wait until next weekend I think. Then we will continue to tackle the backyard and the vegetable garden. I bought a basil plant and planted that with the rosemary in the herb garden. I hope that they all flourish where I planted them.

After all the back-breaking work, we cleaned up and then fixed pizza. For the sausage and peppers half, I used the leftover Pickled Goat Horn Peppers from Michael’s surprise birthday Four Course Meal. I was reminded how AMAZING those little peppers are! They are so delicious and went perfectly on the pizza!

I had one slice of the sausage and peppers pizza (I wanted two more slices of it!) and two slices of the Hawaiian pizza.

And Michael and I shared some freshly baked chocolate chip cookies while we watched “Black Swan.” Holy crap was that a freaky, weird movie!

QUESTION: What did you think of Black Swan?