Monday, January 13, 2014

Labor of Love!

Louis Dean is such a good sport! I am always taking pictures of him and he usually smiles and puts up with it! Today we were working away in the front flower beds and he said, "Hey, LINDA!! Don't you want to take a picture of your FREE LABORER??" 


So I DID!


This is the 'before' pic from Saturday.
I have not ONE, not TWO, but THREE invasive plants that constantly threaten to swallow up Louis Dean's precious rose bushes! Honeysuckle, lantana and MINT!!!
This is actually where I came in blogging.
That was my very FIRST blog post back on January 22, 2010. That was 998 posts ago!
I am STILL fighting that mint!!


This is the 'after' pic! I had pruned back the roses, gave the liriope a haircut and pruned the rosemary on Saturday. Today I cut back the rest of it then mulched it all.
MUCH better!!! We are going to plant two bushes on either end of this area soon.
But for now I am so over the burning desire to work in the yard!!

It was a relief to come back inside and do housework.
This morning I pulled out three bags of FOOD from the freezer.
UNKNOWN food as I had not labeled it.
We had no idea what it would be but I can tell you Louis Dean was thrilled to find chicken fried steak in one of the bags! I added some fresh mashed potatoes and garlic green beans and biscuits and we had SUPPER!!! One of the other bags holds a yummy ham bone which I will use later this week to cook with some pinto beans. The last bag was some noodle dish - I still don't remember what it was but we will find out tomorrow as that's what we're having for lunch!!
Waste not! Want not!!!!

7 comments:

Deb said...

what cool surprises from the freezer....I have to keep my mint trimmed back too...

Vee said...

I have a few grab bags myself. Not sure that I am up for the surprises, though! The garden looks neat and tidy. Hope that you've tamed the invaders.

Kelly said...

We freeze extra food in our freezer too. It's always nice to just be able to pull something out and heat it up! My husband buys packs of meat on sale and we divide it up into poriton sizes for us too. Your flower bed looks nice all cleaned up. It was good that you had nice weather to allow you to do that in January!

Daniela @Frugal Aint Cheap said...

free labor and unknown frozen food...my favorite...sounds like a great day to get some work done outdoor

Wanda said...

I love finding things in the freezer I had forgotten. I have a couple bags of black eyed peas my cousin gave us from her garden. I need to get those cooked up.

You "free laborer" did a find job, and I guess chicken fried steak was a good payment. HaHa

Question: Do you brown your pork chops before putting in the crock pot for that recipe?

chris said...

after years and years of grappling with them, my garden mints are now relegated to window boxes. i plant them right along with the flowers and they serve as the green "filler". they get long and full and trailing and, by the time their roots start to affect the roots of the other plants, our growing season is over anyway. in the spring, i sometimes i find remnants of last year's mints in the compost pile - when that happens, i just plant 'em in the window boxes again! works for me!

Carla said...

I didn't know mint was invasive but I do now. We don't prune anything until Feb 14th. Do you use the mint in cooking or just landscaping? David gets so mad at me when he can find a label on something in the freezer. Some times it rubs off dear.