Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Hot and Sweaty Times





Last night was another night for working out in the yard. I can't say that what I did was honestly yard work. I just stood around and watered my flowers- the hardest thing I did was drag the hose around. James, on the other hand, did "work". Above is my tireless (but very macho and sexy) husband swinging the pick axe, digging up the many slabs of granite half-buried around the yard. The problem is, these rocks stick part of the way out of the ground and no grass is growing in those areas. The photos below show some of the unearthed mini-boulders. They may just look like rocks, but you can see in the first photo how large they are- that's a full size shovel there beside it, so that gives you an idea of how enormous they are. I certainly couldn't pick them up even if it was an immunity challenge to stay on the island! You can see in the last photo the huge holes the rocks left in the yard. I guess the next project will be to fill them with dirt and get grass growing in those areas. I know I am useless when it comes to manual labor around the yard, but I am always there with a friendly smile and the camera.







I also realized that whenever I take photos from our driveway, it's only of the sky in the mornings or evenings. So, here is a picture of our street, taken from across the road. Our house is the first one there on the left. We live almost at the top of a hill- which could also be another reason for all the granite. Our street, like all the other ones in our neighborhood, ends in a cul-de-sac. So, no through traffic, which is really nice. The kids get out there and ride their bikes, people walk their dogs, moms push strollers, and there's even one guy who every day huffs and puffs his way down then back up the hill. Makes for a really quiet neighborhood, which we really enjoy. So far I've been lucky. I've owned three houses (obviously with the husband), and all three were in neighborhoods with no through streets, so I've always had very little traffic to deal with.



This morning I continued with my commitment to get outside more and walk, instead of staying in on the treadmill. Although I planned to go to Peachtree City and walk at the lake, I woke up this morning with a lot of pain in my hip and leg (which makes me wonder if this last epidural worked or not), so I decided to stay closer to home and not have to drive so much. I went over to one of the larger shopping centers (Newnan does not have an indoor mall- poo poo!) and parked at one end of the sidewalk. It was early, and hardly any of the stores were open yet, except for my favorites (and the only two stores there that I ever go to)- Target and Michael's. Luckily I was not tempted to go in, because I left my purse in the car, and I just went to Michael's yesterday and spent too much money.

I walked from JCPenney down to Hibbett Sports twice- down and back, down and back- and surprisingly worked up quite a sweat. It ended up being a 2.5 mile walk, and 40 minutes. I started using my pedometer finally (James graciously helped me calibrate it last night) and racked up exactly 5200 steps on the walk. I know the latest health news claims you should walk at least 10,000 steps a day, so hopefully if I take a good long morning walk, I will get in my ten grand. I forgot to check the pedometer and see how many calories I burned, but probably not enough to work off that gigantic peanut butter cookie I had after dinner last night... :(

3 comments:

  1. Wow! That's a lot of hard work! When I was in junior high school and my folks purchased our new home, the yard was completely unfinished. We moved tons of rock like that before we could plant the grass. It was a tremendous project!! Kudos to James (and you, for your moral support!) for tackling this project!

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  2. Tell James if he continues digging the side of your yard may crumble. Remember you are in Ga not sandy Fla Ha Ha. He will be ready to rest when you come down next week.

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  3. I understand what you all are going through, Sandy. Our area has alot of ROCKS also. We can dig down about 2 inches and find rock!!!! At least though--we don't have rocks sticking up in various places like you all do.

    I cannot believe that when those big developments go into a beautiful area and cut down ALL of the trees so they can build houses. It will take you all a long time to have some nice shade trees, won't it???? One nice thing about our area is that we are not allowed to cut down trees unless we replace them. We have TONS of shade in our yard--almost too much.

    Have a great day --and keep walking.
    Hugs,
    Betsy

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