The New Toy

We have been so grateful around here lately. Since January, we haven't gone more than about 2 weeks without a rain storm. Quite a contrast from the summer! And it's been amazing. Just in a short 3 months, the needed water has brought about a major change to our ranch. We've gone from a dust bowl, to having green stuff growing all around! Some of it is grass, but most of it is weeds! And when I say weeds ... I mean WEEDS!

Do you think your weeds are out of control? Ours were starting to swallow up the children!

James enjoyed plowing tracks down through it, but Wyatt was too short for this kind of thing. He could nearly disappear completely!
JL with a thistle of typical size!
At first, we were just so glad to see green stuff growing, that we didn't really mind the weeds. Besides, some of them were pretty! We had some with white flowers, some with yellow, and some with purple. It was a regular garden of color around here!

But, after a while, the weeds started to take over and bury my flower beds, my sidewalks, and my house in general! From the road, there was a huge sweeping pasture of weeds that made it impossible to see the lower half of our house. Not that this is a problem for me, necessarily, but after a while, it became a problem for walking around and trying to spend time outside with the kids. So, we bumped up a previously talked about purchase:

Behold! Our Green Machine!
Moments after it was delivered, each kid had to have a ride!


Then it was time to see what could be done about our lawn...
Even I took a turn plowing through the hood-high brush. The tractor went through it, no problem!
Afterwards, there was grass and weeds all over our new toy!
By day two, we had a dump bucket which naturally meant more rides!
That night, we celebrated with a cook out! Complete with smores!