Chaotic and loving it.

There's a lot of things happening in my end of the world. Some things I can talk about, some will have to wait just a bit longer before discussing. But all in all: Craziness!

Spring is slowly showing it exists, which is the equivalent of about 100 cans of Mountain Dew for Pacific Northwesters. Seriously. The sun shines one day and we're all out dancing around worshiping it, and then spiraling down into a sad state when the next day we're back to winter. For us, it means a DEEP DEEP cleaning of the backyard. All those plant tags, plastic bags, buckets, you name it. ALL cleaned up. It has meant a few extra buckets on trash day, but I'd rather pay a few bucks for an extra bucket than to keep the backyard in a state of disarray.

We also threw down a bunch of seeds in the yard. Remember how we moved all of our garden beds? Well, now we had to clean where those beds were. The seeds are now slowly coming in. We weren't worried--- the yard will fill itself up with green pretty rapidly; we just wanted to help it along a little bit.

All the excess lumber has been stacked; our neighbors wanted to use it, so we put it behind their garden area.

The deck has been cleared. We have everything carefully along the house wall still to semi-shelter it from the rain, but at least we have no more gigantic tarp over our back deck! Every time I'm in the kitchen, I think that the back door is open... because it's so bright now.

The chicken's new coop has been built! It's hard to describe, but I'm THRILLED with the design. I'm going to let them ride out the summer in this coop, and then I'll likely add more of a back sheltered area once the rains look to begin again. I'll have to post pictures... but every time I've meant to, it's been raining, which means they're covered up! Right now they have a tarp over them, but I do want to get them more of a plastic cover instead. Tarps don't necessarily keep water out very well. I do want to paint the coop come summer, but that's still a ways off. So, keep an eye out for a post sometime soon on the new chicken digs.

New chicken digs means all the old chicken locations have been cleaned up. Not much else news-wise there.

And may I just say, I'M REALLY TIRED OF MUD? Our landlords lack paths ANYWHERE around the house. We put in a brick front foyer area (with their approval and PARTIAL funding), so that cuts down a little bit. But, the driveway before the foyer? Muck-ridden. The back yard? Don't get me started. BLEH. The poor dogs have gotten used to going outside and then having to go into their kennel because they're mucky and we don't want them prancing around the house.

Speaking of dogs, Maddie and Bailey are still best buds. Bailey is almost 100% on the bathroom training, but has the occasional pee incident. Talk about frustrating. He is such a good dog though, and I really cannot complain. Such a total goof though. Maddie is a great big sister and has been having super fun staying out of the kennel at night now. She gets to sleep on the couch or her bed, and she thinks it's just the neatest thing to be permitted to stay out. Seriously-- when we sit down on the couch in the morning, she walks over to us and thunks her head on her lap. Gratitude-filled doggie.

More going on, but more on that later. Bailey discovered that his bed is cool this morning and now has taken to flopping into it with gusto. So, I think I may just try to document this. Oh, and get work done....