Here's The Mail, It Never Fails

...finish that song!

In addition to getting a sunburn today, one of my projects was the jungle that was our mailbox:

There was an enormous giant plant growing from beneath it.  You could barely see the numbers on the side.  To top it off, the name on the mailbox was from TWO owners ago!  Not us, not the people we bought it from, but the people who built the home!

So, obviously it needed a "haircut".

I pulled the plant out.  That took about 35 minutes.  Then I realized that if I didn't dig the roots out that it would probably come back.  Ugh.  I literally spent the next two hours digging every last root from ground.  I also discovered that if I dig 4-5 inches down I hit pure sand.  I knew our soil was supposed to be sandy and all on the shore, but geez I didn't know it was all pure sand below the surface!  I ended up with about 40 pounds of roots, weeds, and dirt.  After all of the digging was done, I was left with beautiful loose soil on top. Then, I planted two new flowers that I got from Lowe's.  I bought yellowish Chrysanthemums.  Mainly because they were cheap.  But also because they are perennials and they can stand the sun all day long.  And also because I love that book by Kevin Henkes:

  

Have you read it?  If not, you definitely should.  It's an excellent children's book.  Anway, after I planted the flowers I added a layer of brown mulch.  Last but not least, I scraped the letters off the front and spray painted the mailbox after sanding the rust away.  Here is the mailbox before:

 And the finished product:

Before:

And after:

Not too bad, huh?

My First Attempt at Working in the Garden

Yikes.  It was scary beforehand.  Here is what it looked like in the front of our house just a few short days ago:

eww.

It was supposed to look pretty...

...but it doesn't.

...it's very overgrown...

...and is full of fungus.

 So, I gave Josh a list of stuff to get at the hardware store that looked like this:  Get stuff for the garden.

Yep, I had no idea what I was doing.

I took these things (big scissors, shears, trimmers???  WHAT DO YOU CALL THEM?) and trimmed up the overgrown bushes to make them look more circular.

Doesn't look too bad...

...but they are all different sizes still.  At least they aren't overgrown.

Now that my back hurts like h*ll...

This mess presented itself... 

...and after removing all this... 

...it turned into this.

After a few more HOURS of weeding, trimming, and not really knowing what I was doing, here is the final product:

Still not too pleased with the overall look of our front garden...

...but it's definitely an improvement.

Next year, after some research, I plan to take out most of the flowers in the front garden that I don't like and replace them with stuff I do like.  I also want to make the bushes smaller, re-mulch, and make it look more spiffy in general.

I also took some hydrangeas from our bushes and brought fresh flowers inside!

 Now....

...what to do with all of this?

Weeds and Weeding

Do you want to know the best part about living so close to the beach?  Waking up and saying, "Hey, Josh.  Want to go to Ocean City today?".  Next thing you know, you are in the car on your way!  We got to OC yesterday around 9:45am and it was already about 95 degrees outside.  Yeah, we only stayed until 1pm.  It was a beautiful day, just super super hot.  The heat index was actually about 110!!!!!!  We routinely applied sunscreen and jumped in the ocean to cool off.  It was a good time!

Do you watch Weeds?

It's a hilarious show on Showtime that incorporates some drama and weird humor.  It's all about weed... yes, marijuana.  And you don't have to be a pothead to enjoy this show.  I vouch for it!  It's addicting and hilarious.  You should definitely watch it...  What is that?  You don't have premium cable?  Oh, neither do I.  See, my friends, that is my next point.  You need Netflix.  I don't care if you don't want it, can't afford it, don't watch much TV or many movies.  You need it.  Josh and I got a free one-month trial the other day (which you can do, too!).  And after the first month, it is only $8 per month!  It's not all just about movies, either.  At the risk of sounding like a Netflix advertisement:  You can get one DVD at a time.  When you are finished, mail it back in (for free) and receive the next one a few days later... any movie or TV series you want.  In addition (and the reason we got it): you can stream an enormous amount of stuff on your computer, wii, xbox, etc.  We stream through our XBOX360.  That is how we have been able to watch nonstop episodes of Weeds from episode 1.  Seriously, think about it.

All of this weed has gotten me in the mood to do some garden work outside.  I have been weeding and gardening like crazy the last few days.  And if you know me, I am not the gardener-type.  I have no green thumb.  In fact, it looks more like this:

Yeah, I am Barney.

But I was mildly successful.  I will post updates about the garden situation later!

Tonight, Josh's friend from high school is coming to visit for a few days.  We plan to go to the beach and to Dogfish Head again to take him to the brewery tour and probably hit up the pub afterward.  And tomorrow night is an exciting one!  It will be our first "party" in our new house.  Actually, it's a taco night.  But lots of friends are coming and we are going to have tons of tacos and margaritas and hang out on the deck and probably play cornhole in the yard.  I am super excited to show all of our friends our house... even though it kind of looks empty right now.  We are still working on getting the furniture we want and decorating.  It will take time and money, but we have a pretty good start, I think! 

In other news, I am continuing on my 100 push up challenge program.  I started only being able to do 7 push ups consecutively.  After two weeks, I could do 22!  That's what I call progress!