Happy Mother's Day!

It's that time of year again here in the good ole U.S. of A., when we honor our mommies. One of my friends has offered greetings, as has the hubster. I'll call my Mom later tonight and chat as always. Dear daughter has yet to realize that Mom would like a call from her ONCE a year, lol. That, or she's waiting for later tonight when I call up to talk to Mom anyhow.

We've managed to get a lot of stuff cut down and burned this week, in the way of all the smallish brushy stuff that's no good for even kindling. If I have to spend a lot of time trimming something up to make it so the thing is in shape to cut up for kindling, it isn't worth the time and effort to do so, and it gets burned. That's where a lot of that awful thorny locust is going. It would be nice to have it for the wood pile, but it's so branchy that there's not a lot of hope to salvage much of it for firewood. There's been two serious piles burned this past week already, another in the burn pit right now, and yet ANOTHER ready to go in the burn pit when it's empty again. Yeesh.

In good news, Arkansas doesn't have a way on paper returns that I can find to allow for part-year resident tax credit, so what was supposed to be $195 refund turned into over $300 when they fixed it. This was a good thing. Along with a good check from work, that meant we could do some things we needed to do, like put a new tire on Sheamus the Great White Van. The "spare" - we only use full-sized tires for spares, we both HATE those stupid little doughnut spares - well, the spare for the van was shot and needed replacing. So the new tire went on the van and the worst of the old tires is now the spare. Another good thing about that meant that we could go on a major shopping spree at Wally World and fill up the cupboards with some serious basic staples. That was a shopping trip to remember!

Otherwise, things are just chugging along bit by bit, as you can see.

This is the end of the drive, at the roadside. Yes, that's old carpet tossed over what was where that one big rock stuck up, to protect the underside of the car from bottoming out too badly on going in and out. Quentin spent part of an afternoon this past week with the mattock, the sledge, the crowbar and a lot of muscles prying up big rocks out of the drive. This particular boulder has been bugging us for months, and the weather got nice enough that he could tackle this particular housekeeping chore outdoors. The carpets still staying there because we need to get more dirt in the area and we want to keep what dirt he did put down (taken from the grading ridge across the road) in place.

The hole from one of the other boulders that he dug out of the driveway. Thank goodness the Ozarks is limestone, so it all broke up pretty easy when beaten upon with the sledgie.

Scraping out around one of the boulders so that he has room to pry it up with the crowbar after busting it up.

A small chunk busted off this one, he's crouched next to it, getting ready to put the crowbar to use to get the rest of it loose.

Remember that HUGE trash pile by the easement? This is what it looks like  now. Yeah, half of it is GONE. Either scrapped or burned, mostly burned. That is a lot of garbage gone.

Hubster prying another boulder out of the drive. All told, he dug up four big rocks.

Knocking the loose stuff from around the hole into it before getting more stuff from the grading ridge to finish filling in.

This was my afternoon yesterday. This is between the walking path and the midden heap. I cleared out a big lot of small stuff and kudzu out of here in about two hours. Still needs raking and trash cleared up, but it's a big difference just with standing stuff out of the way.

And this is the midden heap now that so much more has been cut down and dragged out. There were kudzu vines in this mess that I had to tackle with my chainsaw, what Quentin calls "the midget cricket" to tease me. Some of those vines were fully an inch across at the base. I don't even want to think how long they've been getting overgrown to be THAT big.

The pile of stuff I cut down and trimmed up yesterday - it's what's waiting to go in the burn pit once it's emptied out again.

This is some local wildflower growing next to a rock near the easement. Very pretty little purple things. A splash of color in an otherwise dreary environment - dreary only for the trash and lack of garden!