Adult Life: Living on 3 acres

So last summer when we saw our house for the first time is was sooooo nicely landscaped and had a HUGE yard and Pete was like "This yard is perfect for a dog!" and at the same time I was all "This yard is perfect for a pool!" And then we stared each other down while our real estate agent got uncomfortable.

We are especially good at making people feel uncomfortable.

Since we moved into our house on the last day of August (30 days has September, April, June, and November) August 31, and last summer there was a drought, we were all "Look at how great this landscape is!  Look at how awesome this yard is!!  We have a fire pit!  Let's have a party!!!" and we paid the neighbor kid to mow the lawn once and we were happy and naive.  

Then winter happened and we had the Amazon River at the end of our driveway aka a lot of moisture going on.  THEN spring came about 2 months late, and everything started growing.

And by everything I mean the grass.  The flowers.  The plants.  And the weeds.  At this point, I regretted two things.  1) Not taking pictures of the landscape when the previous owners had it done so that I could tell what should stay and what should go. 2) Buying a house that had a shit ton of landscaping and lawn.  

Finally one day in May when it was nice outside, I was all motivated and feeling earthy, so I decided to go out and pull weeds.  And pull weeds I did.  For two and a half hours.  

No, I could not move the next day.  But I went back outside and pulled weeds for three more hours.  And then the NEXT day I was like OH MY GOD I WANT TO DIE HAVING NICE LANDSCAPE SUCKS WHEN YOU CAN'T AFFORD TO HAVE SOMEONE PULL WEEDS FOR YOU AND YOU DON'T HAVE KIDS THAT YOU CAN MAKE DO IT.  (We are clearly not ready to have kids if the two times we've talked about having kids were when we wanted slave labor to shovel the driveway in the winter and pull weeds last week.)

BUT.  Worse than not being able to move for a week is looking like a schmuck for the summer.  Ok, well, I looked like a schmuck when I could hardly walk/stand/sit/move, but we live in a nice little cul-du-sac that has 5 houses, and our house is the dink.  I mean, I ADORE our house, but it really is the dink of the neighborhood.  

What I'm trying to say is that we need to keep up with the Jonses, so to speak.  They all have nice lawns and landscape, so come hell or high water, we will have a nice lawn and landscape too.

The landscape part we have mostly under control with the help of my supportive Facebook friends, and NOT the help of my a-hole sister who just said, "I don't think you should have pulled that one."  Well.  I KNOW that.  But we had to pull the plant because there was a huge grass plant intertwined and there was no way to get rid of the grass without getting rid of the whole plant.  But seriously, right now on my Facebook there are some pictures of plants that I don't know if I should pull or ignore.  Help.  Also - you Facebook friends are really making me laugh because a handful of you were like "You are cracking me up!" with my questions about plants, and I'm not trying to be funny.  I just have no idea how to figure this shit out.  So if you want to come to our house and identify plants vs. weeds, you are more than welcome.  I will cook for you.  And Peter will buy you a Summer Shandy.

ANYWAYS.

After many trips to the local hardware store (Tangent: One day Peter came home from the hardware store, and he declared, "Today was the best day of my life!" and then I glared at him and he said, "The SECOND best day of my life!!!!" And then he proceeded to tell me that Vern, who owns Vern's hardware, knew his name.  "Sar.  It was amazing.  He said, 'Hey Pete!  Come here, I want to show you something!'  So then I looked around, and I realized hey! he's talking to me! So, he showed me a joke that his sister-in-law sent him on the computer, and it was really funny!  Can you believe he knows my name?!"), we came home with a shovel thing, a little hand hoe thing, some gardening gloves, weed killer, and some candy.  I actually don't remember where I was going with this because I'm watching Newlyweds: the First Year on Bravo right now and I keep getting distracted.

I'll start over.

Over the weekend, Peter and I spent all day Saturday working outside again doing more weeding and looking at our huge effing vegetable garden (Ok, we think it's huge, but all of our super outdoorsy neighbors are like "That's tiny!" uhhhh... riiiiiiight...) and trying to think about what we're going to do with it.  I got sunburned and Peter got a little pink, but now he's already really tan.  On Sunday, we were both hobbling around the house because clearly we are NOT outdoorsy people.

The best news of the day is that the neighbor kid is going to mow the lawn this summer, so we REALLY won't look like the schmucks of the neighborhood.  

Also, we have a ton of mosquitos already, so we both have tons of mosquito bites.  

I'll put up pictures of our lawn soon.  I should actually take the pictures like, tomorrow because the lawn is mown and the weeds are pulled.  I think.

It's only May.  What the hay am I going to do when it's 100 degrees and 100% humidity in JULY and I have to pull those damn weeds??  Because we all KNOW that the last thing I want is for people to judge me based on the outdoor appearance of my house!

Disclaimer: I know that this whole post is categorized as the hashtag that I see people putting on Facebook #firstworldproblems.  I also know that it is classified as #stopbeingspoiledandappreciateyourlawn (it's really hard to type that without using spaces).  But hey!  Freedom of Speech - I can do what I want.  But don't stop reading; I like you!  I won't complain in the next post!!