Fall Is Here!

I cannot say enough how much I love autumn. The weather is perfect, I can wear sweaters and boots, the nice little chill in the air, the smells, the brilliant colors of nature, cozy-ing up with my sweetheart on the couch (as if I don't do that already, lol), the anticipation of the holidays just around the corner, I could go on, but I just love fall!

Recently along with the changes we made to our living room, Stephen and I have also been busy outside "remodeling" our yard as well. It is a ton of work to keep up with our garden, the flowerbeds, and mowing the lawn and keeping it green, especially for only two people with a big yard like we have. Since we bought an older home that means we have to deal with juniper bushes and lots of them because they were very popular to plant back in the day. I cannot stand juniper bushes! I will never ever design a yard using them. Ever. There are tons of other options for an evergreen shrub that not only looks better, but they won't collect spiders and trash either. So, Stephen and I had all our junipers pulled out along with a gigantic vine growing on our wall in the back yard a few weeks ago. My yard now looks bleak and barren, but it's also a blank canvas for me to work my magic.

BEFORE

AFTER

So far we have taken out 12 shrubs and we have four more to go, but we'll wait for spring to finish the job and finally fill in our large dirt patch with grass. I can't wait, it's going to look like a whole new yard come this time next year!

This past Saturday we worked in the yard pulling out two more large shrubs in our front yard to get ready for us to plant some new trees and shrubs. It was strenuous work, and although Stephen hates doing yard work, he did a nice job pulling out the shrubs and raking and shoveling the hideous red lava rock in the back of the truck to take to the dump. We didn't get everything done we wanted to last week so we have to continue again this week getting rid of railroad ties, pruned branches and more lava rock. I have several new shrubs, trees, and somewhere around 200 spring bulbs to plant before it starts to snow this year, so its a race against nature's clock to get everything in the ground so they don't freeze and die during the winter.

One day while I was outside deadheading my zinnias I found this little big guy!

Speaking of bugs, when Stephen and I were scooping out the lava rock out of the back of the truck at the dump last weekend he spotted a giant black spider crawling around and told me to come take a look. I looked at it and saw the distinct shape of its abdomen and tried to turn it on its back to find a red marking. It was a really aggressive spider and it took me a few tries to flip it, but sure enough it was the famed black widow spider! I have seen my fair share of black widows on the farm, but I have never seen one that big. I wish I could've take a picture of it because it was HUGE! Now it creeps me out knowing we have those spiders around our house. We had all the rolls of carpet that we took out of the living room that had been sitting outside for weeks sitting the truck, so I think it crawled inside one of the carpet rolls, eeeewe!

I also had a friend from high school come over and make a cute Halloween craft with me. It's cute and inexpensive, and we had a great time. I even made a pumpkin jelly roll cake for the first time, and I wasn't sure how or even if it was going to turn out, but it was beautiful and yummy!