Day Five-o-nine: inside-outside

On the day people celebrate George Lucas's oeuvre (or parody it), we were busy indoors and out.

We made good progress this week repainting the upstairs. There wasn't anything seriously wrong with the old paint, but it's very thick and thus tends to have a dull look to it. So we switched to our favorite new paint, which has low odor, goes on easily, covers great, and comes in about a bazillion colors. Here's a wall in progress:

And here are two with the first coats on:

Elsewhere we're trying again to turn the former vegetable garden into a visually appealing, low-maintenance bed. Our last attempt, back in July, didn't last through the winter and turned into nothing by weeds. So now we're trying ornamental grasses and a few flowers for color. Hopefully the cedar mulch will keep some of the weeds at bay. If not there's always Round-up.

Finally, all of the cleaning house got us in the mood to tackle a long overdue project--to reclaim our backyard from invasive and encroaching vegetation, a combination of trees, ivy, and some creeping vines that were so old they were thicker than small trees. We turned this:

Into this (which we'll beautify further by removing the old chain-link fence before cleaning, repairing, and staining the wood fence):

And this: