Thank you for all of the prayers and well wishes for my mom. I’d updated last week‘s post and will add another update at the bottom of this one as well.

My tackles all seem to be spur of the moment ones lately – I see something that’s been left undone for long enough that I just can’t stand it for any longer and suddenly it jumps to the top of my priority list. This is what happened over the weekend when our neighbor’s daughter was done mowing our lawn and I actually noticed exactly how overgrown the grass was around all of our planter areas and along the fence. Ron was home to keep the girls occupied and out of the way (pitching plastic baseballs to them in the backyard – this whole baseball-loving phase is lasting quite a long time), so I grabbed the line trimmer and went to work. Unfortunately our trimmer eats through line like there’s no tomorrow, so I couldn’t quite finish everything (after 2 full spools even!), but I did get quite a bit done. Here’s proof.

I started off with the area on the side of the garage. Here’s a couple of before shots:

And after I took the trimmer to it (just ignore the extension cord ):

The circle around the tree in the side yard, first before:

And after:

Then the circle out at the corner:

I got a bit distracted at this point, and spent a few minutes taking pictures of my lilacs. The cold snap that we had right as they were about to bloom had a strange effect on them. Some buds have yet to open, but some of the flowers have been open for days and are already starting to fade. I’ve never seen a lilac bloom quite like this. They are still rather pretty though.

Ok, so here’s the after shot for the corner circle. A future tackle will have to be putting some new mulch in these areas – they’re all really needing it.

I went after the tall grass along the fence after that – and since this job hadn’t gotten done last fall when it should have been, there was quite a lot of matted grass and leaves. Here’s a couple of before shots:

And afterward:

(Sorry about the lens not opening all the way on that one)

The last thing I did was to attack the planter area in the front of the house, underneath the bedroom windows. This area has always been completely full of weeds, due to our filling it with unsifted topsoil back when we first created it. Last year we took out a tree here and started to completely re-arrange how the area is shaped, but ran out of bricks (and money) so haven’t yet finished it. I hadn’t touched it yet this spring – and wow, could you tell… (see, I can grow something well – weeds!)

And here’s the after. Hey, my little rhododendron is still alive in there! Not that you can really see it in the picture below, but it’s there. I was sure I’d killed it last year, but there’s even new growth on the branches now. Huh, maybe my thumb isn’t quite as black as I think it is.

Finishing off this area was my original intent for our garage sale profits, but things worked out differently, so we’ll have to wait a while longer yet. I’m thinking we’re going to need to pull out all of the weed-infested topsoil and just start over again, with sifted topsoil next time.

After all of this yard work, I went inside and took a shower since I’m allergic to grass and had gotten to the point where it was getting difficult to breathe, even with my allergy medication. Which is why this job doesn’t get done nearly as often as it should.

I talked to my Mom again yesterday. She’s been moved to the rehab center within the same hospital where her surgery was done. She sounded much better on the phone – mainly just cranky since she doesn’t like having to do 3 hours of physical therapy every day and they still have her on a special diet that she doesn’t see the need for either. She’s apparently fighting them quite a bit on the physical therapy, so I don’t know how long they’ll keep her in the rehab center – she still may end up in a nursing home until she’s able to take care of herself and go home. I tried to convince her to put more effort into the physical therapy, but she just says that she’s tired. So we’ll see.

What are you tackling this week? And check out other Tackle It Tuesday posts over at 5 Minutes for Mom!