New Landscaping. Who Dis?

Regular readers know 2026 is all about my “Power Weekends.” When I read an article on Art of Manliness that Ernest Hemingway was big on “planning his weekends,” I had an a-ha moment. That “a-ha” was this … weekends kinda used to stress me out because I’m not the type of guy who likes to sit-and-do-nothing. Unless that was my plan. If my plan was to read books, sleep-in, grill something, take a nap, and watch football … well, see? That’s getting dangerously close to a “plan” … even if the plan was “do-nothing.”

You get what I’m saying, right?

Is this Blog entry about how awesome I am at weekend? Or what I did this past weekend?

A little of both.

I use a combination of a paper LEUCHTTURM1917 bullet journal and Google Calendar and Tasks to make my daily To-Do, and I have a sticky-note where I write “Weekend” and as I think of things I need to do, I write ’em down.

This past weekend was, “Attack the corner.” I have this out-of-control corner of my yard where the daylilies have spread too much and, recently, DTE came in and butchered all the natural growth I had just outside my fence line. It was beautiful. It was total privacy. I called my “Fenway Green Monster”.

But, like I said, DTE destroyed it, exposing my overgrown corner.

Then I heard about a lady* who knows a guy** who knows a guy*** who had a line on free hydrangeas, but I had to drive a little over an hour to get them, so I made a plan.

To-Do: Saturday – drive to EastLansing to move my son into his house; then drive to get the hydrangeas
To-Do: Sunday – breakfast, Church at 10am, then 11:30am until I’m done… weed, turn over the soil, rip out all the garlic and daylilies, split the bleeding hearts, plant the 5 free hydrangeas, zip to Home Depot for 5 bags of Vigiro dark brown mulch; spread mulch 3-inches deep.

I even improvised and transplanted the daylilies to another spot in my yard.

The point of all of this is (a) I dominated the weekend and I don’t ever have to wonder on Sunday night, hmmmm, did I make the most of this weekend and (b) I’m super happy with how the corner turned out. I think my peonies are stunted or deer at the flowers, but next year … I’m going to have so many seasonal flowers and because the corner looks good and is eye-catching, it draws my eye to it and I don’t notice the ugliness that DTE left for me and my neighbor.

Next plan? Work in the neighbor’s yard to clean up the fence line. What’s that you ask? Why am I working in the neighbor’s yard? Trust me … if you could see the nastiness left behind by DTE, you’d understand … he’s happy I’m working back there to clear years of growth and roots. He won’t be like, “hey, jerk, stop coming into my yard and pulling up roots, cutting things up and bagging the clippings, and helping me … I’m calling the cops!!!”

He won’t say that. And even if he does … I have a plan.

I love it when a plan comes together.

And here’s some pictures…

*lady = my wife
**guy = her brother (aka my brother in law)
***guy = his friend