Our Backyard
Our yard is a mess. The landlord kept it full of leaves, twigs, branches, logs, compost piles and even garbage. We are tearing all of this up. Slowly but surely we are cleaning up the mess we inherited, and making a pretty, and useful yard. So, over the weekend we plugged away at the daunting yard. We have, of course, started by picking up and disposing of his garbage and old broken items. The other items such as old pots, tools , and yard items were collected and stored neatly away in the already packed shed. Here was where the real fun began. We had already started to rake and remove the massive amounts of leaves from the back yard, but so much more remained.
This weekend is when we started working on a fire pit. This way, once this chore is finished, we can move onto the chore of burning the branches and debris that remain. Tony dug a very nice, large, circular hole, and we started with placing the first ring of bricks. We then layered the bottom with rock (the landlord also had much random rock to be picked up from the middle of the yard!). The pit is unfinished, but looking gorgeous already! Here are some pictures:

Here is a bit more of the mess. We are removing all of the compost, which is those lumps, and the twiggy looking trees are going to be moved from the clump he planted them in.
Need Your Expertise
On Sunday Tony and I visited my grandparents. My grandma gave me some dishes and also two antique picture frames. She didn’t know much about them, except that they are old. I’ll say! The back of one picture has some writing on it that says 1898! I know the frames are cross corner with leaves, and that they used to be quite popular. Do you have any more information on these frames or the pictures inside?

This is the writing on the back of one picture. We can't make out all of the words, but we can read 1898!
I would love to know more about these, so if you know anything, let me hear it!