Boot Camp North

For most of the year I lead a pretty sweet life when it comes to manual labor.  We have a yard guy at home who mows, edges and cleans our tiny yard.  He even insisted on planting my annuals this year well ahead of the wedding so they would be established by the time of the wedding.  He weeds my beds and keeps the yard looking great.  I splurged this spring and hired a house cleaning service.  I haven't had a housekeeper since the last time we lived in Houston about 10 years ago.  Again, I used the wedding as an excuse because when I clean the house I do it bit by bit and by the time I finish it is time to start again.  Sometimes I just need the entire house clean on the same day.  With just two of us living in the house it does not get very dirty so it's easy to maintain most of the time.  If I want to exercise I have to go for a walk, a run, play golf or go to yoga.  My life in Houston is not labor intensive, it is pretty cushy.  Come to think of it, this could be one explanation for my never ending battle of the bulge.

As I sit here writing, my thighs are throbbing, I have an ice pack on my tired, over used knees and the rest of me is spent.  We have been at the farmhouse for three days.  There is no yard guy and no house keeper here.  There are countless jobs that need to be done.  When we run out of things to be done I am sure it will be time to start re-doing the things we did a long time ago!  We have entered DIY land.  Boot camp north.

The grass was super long when we arrived....BUT in order to mow we first had to pick up half of a tree that was blown all over our yard during a spring ice storm.  Must have been quite a storm judging by the amount of rubble on the ground.

Getting from this....

to these, plus one more giant pile not pictured...takes about 100 squats.

Once the grass was mowed the yard was full of...mowed grass and lots of it!  Unless I want to mow over the huge piles of grass all summer I had to do some raking.  I figure it's an upper body exercise plus a bit of core work.  I raked all morning and loaded the piles into the wheelbarrow and carted them off to the back corners of the yard.  That has to be worth at least a glass of wine or two, right?

Earning my wine one pile of grass at a time!

When I was raking I noticed our strawberry patch looked more like a dandelion patch.  Those poor strawberry plants were being strangled to death by those mean old dandelions.  After lunch I decided to free the strawberries from the clutches of the dandelions.  I need those berries for jam later this summer and the grandsons love strawberries....as do the rest of us.  Two hours of weeding not only worked my hands but kneeling for that long felt a bit like an ancient form of penance judging by my knees tonight.

"Help....we are strangling!"

"Ahhh, that's better, we can breathe!"

One more reason for my aching quads lies in our sun room.  We decided to insulate the floor, the walls and the ceiling hoping to make the room a little more bug proof and temperate.  This project meant the steps to the room needed to come out and left us with a 3 ft. drop into the room.  Going in and out means more high stepping.  The upside is that we can already feel the difference in the room.  Can't wait for summer nights in the porch!

One parting shot...TJ did his boot camp in the garden.
Talk about an upper and lower body work out!