What do you do when your husband just had brain surgery?

Ok. Some people clean. Some people shop. Some people sleep. I do home renovation projects when I’m stressed out.

Before


After




So, this is what I’ve been up to the last couple weeks. We had already bought the bricks in spring, hoping to put in a mini-retaining wall in the front of the house for a garden. Once the whole basement snafu hit, the bricks just sat dormant in the corner of the garage. And life went on. Once we started to settle back into some sense of normalcy after David’s last surgery, I started to get a bit angsty. I had all this pent up energy and stress. I felt completely powerless against this damn tumor. And I realized…I can’t always control the fear. I can’t control the cancer. But I could do this. It gave me something to focus on besides all the crap swirling about in my head. So I threw myself into it. It was great. It took an insane amount of physical labor…much more than I expected. But it felt great. That little wall took 5 bags of paver dirt and rock, 93 bricks, 6 bags of manure, and 25 bags (40 Lbs each) to make that sucker! Whew! With David’s weight restrictions, he was unable to move any of the bags, but he could move 1 brick at a time. Which made him insane. I didn’t mind though. I relished the physicality of it all. It was a great stress reliever and it was great to finally do some sort of landscaping on the house. I have the bug now. It turned out so nicely, I want to do more! Dave did the putzy part of the wall. He leveled each individual brick on the first layer. Fun. But as you can see, he did a great job and the wall is level and sturdy. Then a couple of our dear friends came over to help us move, assemble and install the fountain. That was a beast, but worth it. We found it on summer clearance and decided...what the hell. It looks gorgeous and adds a wonderful calming affect to the back yard with the melodic sounds of water. Just love it.

A good friend of ours who has insane allergies decided to tear out her entire perennial garden. The flowers and plants were making her sick basically and she said we were welcome to them. So, we made a day of it. We met another friend from work and her husband there and we spent the morning digging out plants! Alec loved it. He ran around like a banshee with his little wheelbarrow and trowel for awhile and then decided to spend the remainder of the time playing with Maggie the Golden Retriever. Those two just love each other. Once we got a ton of flowers and plants dug up, Including: Hosta’s, Day Lilies, Purple Cone Flowers, Freesia, White Daisies, Stilby, a pretty green and white ground cover plant and some gorgeous Ferns. Once they were up and out of the ground we loaded them into “Sophie” our mini-van and our friend’s truck and proceeded to drive them across town and planted them into our garden. Mind you, we had tons more plants than we were expecting, so not only did we start to fill our little garden in the backyard but we put some on the sides of the house as well. It was a fun day and we are grateful to have such kind and generous friends in our lives.