Where to start about our weekend?
Saturday morning the family and I met 14 other neighbors to pick up trash all around the neighborhood. We collected over a dozen trash bags of litter and cleaned out creeks that feed eventually into the Neuse river. I got doughnuts and coffee for participants and vests and tools loaned from the city. It was a great turnout and a great way to make an immediate difference in our neighborhood. I’m happy to say that we did not have nearly as much trash as last time. I don’t know if that’s because the last trash clean-up kept recurring trash from collecting, or if the recent non-stop rain simply washed it all downstream. I’m thinking the rain just cleaned things out for us. Ah well.
After Saturday’s work, we chilled watching videos for a while. The kids flew kites for a while and planted flowers. I mowed the lawn for the first time of the season and spent some time shoveling mulch into our expanded garden area. We ate out on the back porch for what was a pleasant evening.
This morning we had a fun breakfast. I continued shoveling mulch while waiting for the family to get ready for a greenway bike ride. We took the kid son the Trail-A-Bikes for the first time in months and rode Raleigh’s greenways all the way to the western Beltline and back. Being out of practice for this (and hauling kids who are ever-increasing in their weight) make this ride a bit tougher than any of us anticipated. Still, for the first ride of the season it was a success.
Another video later, I got some help shoveling the last of the mulch into the backyard. Lily, our 4 year old neighbor, came over to help the kids draw with sidewalk chalk. Then the three of them helped me complete the mulch job, pointing out all the worms in the pile.
Not long afterward, two other kids from down the block arrived and they all were playing happily in our backyard. It was a wonderful sight, reminding Kelly and me of our former neighborhood. At suppertime, we said goodbye to our guests and ate a tasty meal on our pollen-covered screened porch.
Kelly and I finished our taxes after the kids went to bed and now we’re headed that way, too. I’ve got a fun week of work ahead of me before Kelly and the kids head up to Virginia for a few days.