Of The Outside and Paint With Me: Mood

Thing have been CRAZY around here lately. Between the weather getting nicer and spending more time outdoors and my babysitting an extra kid most days during the week, it has been enough just to keep up with the laundry and the cooking. So here is my mood submission for Paint with Me Thursday. Questionably artistic and done as hastily as most of my stuff around here right now, but my mood nonetheless.

Now that we're feeling uncomfortably busy, let's add in the extra of outside projects. Ties taken from around the outside of our two big maples and rebuilt into what will be a garden in the back. And we are AGAIN attempting to get grass to grow in our ridiculously sandy soil.....at least in the front this year.

Since we are now dirty and tired, let's throw in some bees. Yup I said bees. See all those little mounds of dirt? Apparently my deliciously sandy soil is also host to a heck of a lot of ground bees. Half of the back yard and part of the front... all the parts where the grass is crummy... is host to lots and lots of little solitary bees.

Here's a close-up of one of the holes they have their nests in (dark spot right at the base of the dandelions) I tried to get pics of the bees, but they are so fast and I was using the wrong camera and I didn't have time to be patient. Man, I hate looking at these pictures. Someday, we are going to have some nice grass. We look like we live in the desert!!

I was seriously wigging out about the bees before. There are SO many of them. But the more I am reading and seeing, the more inclined I am to just leave them alone. I am actually convinced now that we had them last year, and I just didn't pay any attention to them. Now that I know they are there, I feel like we can just be respectful of their habitat for the few weeks a year they are a bother. I can't justify all the chemicals on my lawn, the money gone and the destruction of mostly peaceable bees just to be rid of them. I'll just make my kids wear shoes in April.

Next week is spring break around here. And this year that means me and 5 kids (babysitting two that week) toting off to the local YMCA every morning for free swim lessons (gotta love splash week) and me feeding them and praying they don't destroy my house in the afternoons. I might not be around much. But hopefully I won't go crazy.