Yard Work

I don't like yard work, I think I could blame it on the child labor that was extracted out of me growing up, but I think my mom might read this so I won't. Instead I would just like to say, (Mom and Grandpa are you listening?) That I do have SOME standards!

1) Green is good. Well unless it's purple (creeping charlie), yellow (dandilions), white (clover), or brown (well this color isn't good but the cow pasture from the neighbors floods parts of our yard with...umm... "dirt" and it's brown and there isn't much I can do about it).
2) It should be short. Unless short means that I have to mow it more than once every 7 (or 14) days, then it can be a bit longer. Or if I lose a kid in it, then it's time to mow, but they yell really loud so that takes some serious length.
3)I want to walk in it barefoot.

Ok fine I have ONE standard, but it's something right???
So that leads me to my problem. I have too many thistles, and since this directly violates standard number 3 I have been trying to do something about it. The problem is my lack of an other standards are making it sort of difficult. A weed killer you say... well then I would have no lawn (see standard number 1) . So I have been digging thistles, a LOT of thistles, three wheelbarrows full and counting, that kind of a LOT of thistles. Now I have about half my lawn thistle free, Horray! New problem: driving the wheelbarrow is getting difficult due to all the ankle breaking holes left from the thistle removing. This leads me to my big problem with yard work. You spend time, lots of time (if you are a certain kind of person all your time, if you are me as little as you can get away with) because it's always SOMETHING, and what do you end up with, a short green thing you can walk across...


While I have been digging thistles, Ivy and Clara have been playing on a blanket together while storm wanders around the yard (she finally figured out it's not a good idea to catch the thistles I throw on the pile). See...

Oh right... so what's actually happening is that Storm is eating sticks and grass and creating lawn shrapnel all over the blanket while Clara has crawled off the blanket in search of her own lawn to chew on and Ivy found a toad.
Just after this picture was taken Storm and Clara noticed the toad and both tried to eat it.

Tomorrow I'm going to work on the flower beds!