landscaping, lifescaping

i am a firm believer that your outlook shapes your life. now, thanks to our cleaned off, cleared out porch, my outlook is that much brighter!

before:

after:though it's kind of hard to tell from these pics, we removed a huge holly bush, as well as several small bushes and a tree from just the front of the house.

we cut trunks and hauled sticks, raked leaves and swept cobwebs, banged mud-dobber nests and cleared the junk from our house. we no longer look like white-trash with several appliances littering our porch! yay! i had to take a moment and bask in the wonderfulness of it.
throughout the day, our trusty companions (brown dog, red dog, and spotted dog) ran around picking up sticks, digging holes, and chasing the ducks halfway across the lake. lillie swam out so far (with her glazed-over-i-can't-hear-you-cause-i'm-chasing-birds expression) that i thought she might become exhausted and sink in the center of the lake. the ducks were hilarious though, they somehow became an organized gaggle (or whatever ducks in a group are) and spread out, each one going a different direction across the lake. it was too funny to watch lillie, huffing along as fast as she could, zig-zagging in all directions and not knowing which duck to follow. after that, she was content to be hosed off for quite a while, and by the time we left for the rodeo, they were all snoozing in their pen.

the rodeo was fun but not as... rowdy as i'd hoped. the bull-riders were good, but the bulls were better, and i was definitely glad no one got seriously injured after watching several of them get raked under the hooves of those giant animals. the biggest casualty seemed to be the lady who got dirt in her eye. we headed over to rachel and mike's apartment-warming party after that and chatted with the crew over there before calling it a night.

i guess it was pretty late when we got home, because we fell right asleep, and we couldn't get out of bed until after noon today. luckily, the cracker barrel is open all day and has coffee. after our breakfast... at 2pm... we headed to see byron's show, give it up, turn it loose, which was a quite entertaining collection of related monologues, a few of which had me nearly rolling in the aisles (it was one where an english teacher was in prison, and i felt like the man was speaking my life with every breath)! we got back, and i sat in my rocking chair on the porch, planning lessons with the dogs, while andrew slept some more. despite the whole lesson planning part, it was a nice afternoon sitting on the porch with the girls while the drizzle began.

hopefully i can keep my positive outlook throughout this week.