More Working in the Garden

You can never have too many daffodils. They are all starting to bloom now. I think I put about 50 of them in the ground last fall. So far only a few of them have bloomed, but there are a lot of buds.
Tulips are coming up as well, they are slightly behind the daffodils, but that means that I have to start spraying them with the garlic water so that the squirrels don't eat them. Nasty little creeps.
The Southern Graphics Council meeting happened this past weekend and Melanie and I presented a demo on the Japanese stab binding. It went really well! We got lots of compliments, and I'm really pleased by the process.
After I got home on Saturday afternoon - I worked in the garden. I can't believe it but I actually had to mow the lawn already!
My goals for the outside are:
1. Keep the weeds and undesirable growth to a minimum. This will mean spending a lot of time out there managing it. It also means being vigilant about mowing the lawn so that dandelions don't take over. Grrr - those things are hard to get out of the ground.
2. Build a better fence in the way back and on the side. Right now they are just chain link fences and they are ugly and worse, I can look through them at everyone else's garbage, and they can see through as well, to spy on me. (But I'm not paranoid or anything.)
3. Start dealing with my porch. The snow storms we had in February finally did a number on the back end of the porch - it's super dangerous now. I don't think it will be that difficult to fix, I just need to plan ahead and use an electric saw. I'm not cutting all of the those boards by hand. I think I'm going to have to do things in stages.
I spent a lot of time yesterday cleaning up more "laub" - what is that word in English? Um, brush? debris? fallen-down-plant-stuff? There are also still a ton of branches lying around needing to be cleaned up as well as roots needing to be yanked out and on and on. Of course none of this counts all the trash hiding underneath everything. Yuck.
Along with lots of candy wrappers, cigarette holders, and unidentifiable stuff I also found the following treasures:
They are (top row l-r): broken shovel, fabulous twisted vine, broken rake.
(bottom row l-r): rear view mirror to ? moped? knife, a hoke-thingy that was used to put shutters up on my house back when my house had shutters on the outside, another strange metal thing I couldn't identify, a green marble, a peach pit that had rooted (I stuck it in a pot - I'd like a peach tree), half of a coconut shell, some other weird metal thing and chain. There is actually lots of chain all over the place. Unfortunately it's grown through plants and things and I can't get rid of it. All of these things really make me wonder about the story behind the object. How did this thing get here - was it a careless human? What were they doing/thinking? What on earth were they chaining up? I also found a ton of glass. It makes me wonder if people used to throw bottles and watch them shatter. It makes it dangerous for me ( did wear two pairs of gloves) because I'd like to dig up some soil, but it's full of glass. The soil by the way, is fantastic. I must have brought up about two dozen earthworms. Big fat ones.
Oh, since this is a blog about my house, I also replaced the bulbs on three of the porch lights. Oh! and! the insurance guy came last week and I'm gettin' some money to help fix the massive leak. Yay!