Today

 I forgot to take a before photo of the first ivy bed I began cleaning out but this can give you a pretty good idea of how thick it was. This bed is next on the destroy list!!!!

 Sunday's are pretty much the only day I could devote to the battle of the ivy. While we live on a dead end, quite street I still don't trust the grands out front when I am working, so Sunday it is :) After 5 LONG hard weeks of pouring boiling water and gallons of vinegar, pulling, digging, raking, then pulling some more this bed is as close to being done as I will be able to get it. One of the things left to do this past Sunday was to lay heavy landscaping cloth to cut off any leftover ivy roots from growing. I planned to finish it off with a HEAVY layer of wood mulch and maybe a few pots of flowers to help brighten the ugliness up a bit. The final touches are now waiting for hubby to do now that I am in a leg brace :(

 During the week (weeks)  I have been getting a bit of work done in the garden when the kiddo's are around. Six wooden raised beds were disassembled, the dirt distributed around the yard and the fence moved to cover a smaller area. I bought recycled plastic raised bed kits to start all over in hopes that the STINKIN Bermuda grass will stay out of the new beds. There was a whole lot of raking, pulling, digging, followed by leveling the area and putting down heavy landscape fabric going on. Next on the To Do for here is loads of wood much to spread and a whole heck of a lot of new dirt. Those tasks will now be going on hubby's to do list, again the whole leg brace has put a crimp in my plans.

 After meeting DD#3 yesterday to load her up on enough groceries to last her family for what I hope will be a full month of meals while she will be recuperating from next weeks c-section I slipped on a dress and threw on a necklace to go to our friends visitation/memorial :(

Oh ya and pulled from the fabric stash to make another table runner from this pattern. I hope to keep this one for myself!!

I dreaded yesterday :) I hate, hate, hate, funerals, memorials, visitations and all that goes along with them. I am more like a dog that wants to go hide licking my wounds only to come out when it's all better. Everyone handles grief in different ways....for me it's very private, but is that fair to the family we care so much about who was saying their last goodbye's to their Husband, Father, and Grandfather?

 So I went....Hugging his wife, feeling her loss, knowing how hard it will be to go on without the man you have made a life with for the past 40 years....there are just no words. We hugged, looked at each other several times then hugged again, spoke of what we both felt was the blessing God had given them all before he passed and hugged once more. No words were needed. His adult children...they were incredible, the grace they have at such a difficult time in there life was refreshing. They will be the rock their Mom will need in the difficult times ahead.

The day ended with the news announcement that the man who brought all this destruction to this family was now in jail. He has been charged with hit and run along with vehicle manslaughter. Why didn't he just stop? We all make mistakes, we can all be involved in and accident, but to run from what he knew was a horrific accident, hide his car, hire a lawyer even before he was the person of interest being investigated...It seems to me he had one thing on his mind and that was himself. He sat on his sofa each night and watched the newscast of the police looking for his van, he heard updates from the hospital of the condition our friend was in. Day after day for 12 days he sat back. Finally he was given until yesterday to turn himself in. He is very well groomed and looking like a normal upstanding citizen in his mug shot, this man who sat and watched, planed, each day of how he will beat the system for causing the death of another.

How do people live with themselves I wonder?