We need to talk about backyards, okay? You know what? Let's expand this. Also front yards. We'll just say yard. The yard. What is a yard? but a patch of grass, maybe a lump of mulch and a, and a hosta, you know, maybe a, maybe a picnic table, maybe a gazebo. Maybe a tricycle. Maybe some chalk on a sidewalk. Maybe a sprinkler or a bucket of suds from a car wash. Some gardening tools in a shed. A lawnmower with a gas stain below it in the garage. What is the yard?
And I want to say the American yard because it sounds like poetic or something, but I don't think it's uniquely American. And I also think it's, I think we probably, I think didn't like England invent the lawn as we know it. or France or something. So anyway, I think the British are more dedicated to the yard than the American, personally, from what I can see on YouTube. At least the garden.
So let's talk about it. I have discovered that it is a key to my life, a massive, massive key to unlocking happiness in my life. And I kind of talked about this a little bit before, but, but for parent, it has solved a giant parenting issue for me because my kids are not in an age where we can just go do anything. They need to be like super monitored, you know?
And they also need to be super entertained. Those are the two things that make it exhausting, is they have to be entertained, they get bored, and they have to be monitored because they shove things down their throat. That's the least of the worries, honestly. And it depends on which kid we're talking about, but I got one kid who's 10 months old and he literally...
will shove everything he can down his throat. He has the most giant mouth you've ever seen on a baby. We just had to upgrade two sizes of binky because the pacifiers... He can fit them in his mouth, the entire thing. And we already bumped up the size of pacifier. This never happened with River. Never thought of this even. I thought, oh yeah, pacifiers, they're engineered to be bigger than a baby's mouth hole. No.
He can fit the whole thing in his mouth, and he does. He fits the craziest things in his mouth. Anyway, I spend most of my time... shoving my finger into his mouth and like sweeping for random like bits of stuff that he like shoves in there anyway okay let's get back to the yard so the yard is this incredible thing because
It's like, I don't know, any chance I get, whenever it's me and the boys, we're going outside. Like the other day, it was after work, it was just me and them, and it was raining, like misting, sprinkling.
I still took them outside. It was like not that warm and it was raining and I took them outside. I put a tarp down and I put like a cage. I call it a cage, but you know, it's those, those, um, playpen panels those plastic ones you know i'm talking about um and uh you know i just put them all around and put like a little tiny slide in there and a little like horsey thing to like bounce on and then you know random stuff and then just threw the boys in there and
Well, River can do whatever he wants, but he actually wanted to hang out in there with Knox and, like, harm him, you know. Gentle, River, gentle. River, do not ride Knox. River. River, do not ride Knox. But why? Because he's smaller than you. You're too big. Why am I too big? Because you eat food. I don't know. Sunlight. What's that stuff? That's photosynthesis. I'm not sure.
So anyway, there's just, I mean, I could fill you with these stories. This is the backyard is my bliss. So today it's just me and them and. The whole day was spent in the yard and it will continue to be spent in the yard until we walk to get dinner with my family and walk to get ice cream and then walk to the playground and then walk back. Because, you know, you've heard me record about the paradise that is where I live. But forget that even. Just the yard.
ah, I got a bunch done today. I've been like excavating this, like I've been unearthing concrete that somebody buried before I bought the house. And just like, I'm just like an, I'm an archeologist in my own yard. I found like coal. from when when this house was like you know heated by coal so i found like this little deposit of like coal chunks in the ground um i've been doing a bunch of flagstone like patio work like i've been collecting flagstone digging up flagstone
And, you know, leveling it, like doing a lot of digging and tilling, landscaping. I redid all the front landscaping a couple weeks ago and like ripped it all up. you know, dug out like giant roots and with an ax or hatchet, no, an ax and like got them all out, you know, like laid a new line, did a new like a trench edge and ordered.
you know, like three square yards of topsoil and two or three square yards of mulch and bought $800 worth of native plants and whatever. So, I mean, this is part of my life now.
like i water stuff every day we have an herb garden in the back and like a vegetable garden and um so like yesterday i picked up a bunch of vegetables the other night not no herbs and and i sat down so i go river river you want a garden buddy and he goes he's like yeah yeah we can dead and then i say yeah let's garden man and uh
And then I go and I get, we each have a kneeling pad. We each have a shovel. They're the same. And I've realized that he doesn't like kid stuff. So I just get him like adult stuff. He's got an adult kneeling pad, an adult shovel. He does have Paw Patrol gardening gloves.
And so we put on the guarding gloves and that takes forever because he can't put his fingers in the finger holes. That's, this is honestly the most stressful part of my day is trying to get his fingers in the finger holes, but he's, he's really patient about it. You can't, it's like, buddy, put your thumb here. He thinks his first finger is his thumb. Anyway.
So we get all rigged up and like, you know, I go, where do you want to plant the basil, buddy? And we, the reward for planting the basil is he gets to pick a leaf off and eat it. He loves eating herbs. So every time he's out there, it's, can I pick mint? Can I pick basil? It's like, sure, buddy. Yeah, you can have.
We tried parsley today. He liked parsley. We have a lettuce plant and he loves the lettuce. So whenever we're just hanging, I rip him off like two pieces of romaine and he just runs around the yard eating romaine and very quickly downs the romaine and comes back and wants more romaine. It's actually a summer. mix you know if you were actually checking
But yeah, I'm doing like a million things. I'm lifting like stones, a ton of stones and bricks. I'm working on like a brick pad next. I do a ton of digging. I do a ton of trash management because like there's all this like construction debris from our attic that's just constant. constantly piling up.
Like I literally made a mound of like dry bags of drywall bits and then like wrapped it in a giant tarp. It's just a giant bubble of construction debris to get it out of my garage. But yeah, we do a lot of weed and we do, it's such an adventure. I just love it.
I love it so much. We identify plants. I have this app called Picture This. I mean, any AI thing can do it, but the Picture This app is incredibly good. It's money, super, super, super well spent. Like this app is worth it. I got it to identify.
poison ivy mostly because I really hate poison ivy. I hate it so much. Have you ever gotten poison ivied? I've been poison ivied way too many times and it gets worse and worse every time. Um, and so I'm just like, it's it's the bane of my so i'm constantly like watching out for poison ivy but a lot of plants look just like poison ivy and poison ivy can look so different you know i got poison ivy big time from this like
landscaping stuff that me and my buddy mitch did when we this is actually a wild story i don't know if you ever heard this story but we we like we moved into a shanty shack on we we both worked for like a for like a boy scout organization and it's called christian service brigade if anybody went if everybody was in csb or royal rangers or something like that
We worked for them and the headquarters are in our town and the headquarters is just a house and in the back they had this like old barn shed thing. And they said we could live in it. So we like... It was just filled with junk, like, and it was not hospitable at all. And there was, there's no plumbing. There's no electric, anything. So we were like, we're going to make this from scratch. The rule was we can't buy anything.
it all has to be just junked and scrapped and whatever. And we ended up making like cabinets and we made, I remember that was where I learned how to frame. I framed in like a bathroom and there's so many, we never got plumbing there, whatever. The point is, is we did a lot of landscaping outside. It is a really fun story. And it's like, when I look back on how ridiculous of like, why would they even let us do that? And there were just so many things that we did that were so stupid.
And irresponsible, but really fun. But I got this nasty poison ivy because we were like digging up all of this stuff and just immersed in it. So we were both just... Totally poison ivied out to the wazoo, like open wound poison ivy. And this stuff looked like ivy, you know? Like it had that sheen on the leaves, like glossy kind of waxy, dark green looking.
But then I got poison ivied another time on like near a creek. And this stuff was looked like raspberry leaves, you know, had the texture. I'm just throwing out these. You ever seen raspberry leaves? You know what they look like? It's like a light green matte finish, frizzed edges, kind of. Anyway, so this app. This is one of those episodes. Buckle up.
This app called Picture This, it's so sick because it's always right. It is always right. It knows every plant. Take this app and go to a nursery and just start snapping pictures of obscure plants and it will nail them every time. no matter what the season you could take a picture of bark it's so good so and it tells you like how to care for it what the health of the plant is so we go around our yard and we just start identifying things and when i started doing this i started realizing
This is what I did. I first just, when I wanted to like do all this landscaping in the front, I just went to a bunch of nurseries that had native plants. Cause apparently that's what you're supposed to do for like bees and stuff. And I spent a bunch of money and got native plants and whatever. Then I start. just poking around my estate, which is like not huge. Our lot is like two, my, my, the like property that I live on is 200 feet long and 50 feet wide.
So if that puts anything in perspective for you. But that's like a lot of opportunity for random crap to grow in random places. There's no gardens. Like nobody had a garden. But there's like... Weed piles and things that maybe were a garden 15 years ago. I don't know I just started identifying every single growing thing I can find
And finding really cool stuff. Like I found like a blackberry bush, like an Allegheny blackberry bush, which is like a native Allegheny is an hour from me. And that's like a native wild bush that produces blackberries. is like something I would have just mowed over that's in my backyard. And I have a small like black walnut tree and black walnut is like incredible wood, like the best wood.
whatever i could go on and on and on with things but it's just really cool i found like i found some yeah some fruit tree type fun mulberry tree i found a crab apple tree um and these are things that just they end up not making it so you never know they're there But if you like dig it up and plant it somewhere else and water it and like, you know, put some protection around it from bunnies or something like you can grow a thing.
I found, yeah, I don't know. I found a bunch of cool stuff. Then you start to get good at identifying it. So you start and you start to see, I don't know. We got like cool wildflowers and. And so I like take a bunch of forget-me-nots and like pot them. And now I have this really cool like pot of like forget-me-not flowers for this season. I don't know. It's like, this is the, if I could give it all up.
I would just hang out in my yard all day and garden and landscape and like build like stone paths and, but I'm developing my, like my ethos and it's like trying to use natural materials as much as I can. and just trying to do stuff for free because you can we got a bunch this all started because i got a bunch of quotes i've always putzed around in the yard but this year i'm doubling down like big time um again because i i'm with these babies all the time and
Hang out in the yard is the best because River loves it and I love it. We have a trampoline that our neighbors gave us because their neighbors gave them a new trampoline. This like neighborhood shift of trampolines happened and we got one. And so I hung out with River and Knox on it for like an hour today.
but i love trampolines and so does river um so river will just like walk over to the trampoline and hang out in there or he'll go over to the sandbox or he'll go over to the slide or help me garden or he'll draw with chalk whatever there's just so much for him to do i i like threw on some sides to this little backyard wagon and just i just like walked him around the yard today and gave him a tour of the yard and was just like
like uh like i was a tour guy and it was a joke like this is the trampoline that's been jumped on for a thousand years whatever and he just loves it i put a blanket in there for him and he just laid down and looked up at the leaves and the trees while i just walked him around the yard put up the hammock today
So we just laid in the hammock. He literally laid next to me. He never lays for any period of time. And he said, he's like, is this nice? I was like, it is nice, buddy. It's really nice. Sunshine and through the. big tree like hundred year old maple tree canopy that surrounds our backyard it's it's a beautiful thing i tell you backyards um so anyway landscaping my ethos it's like
I started because we got quotes for the landscaping to get done in the front. Cause it was just weeds and overgrown and horrible and looked like an eyesore. And I'm sure our neighbors grumbled about us and the quotes all came back like five grand. whatever. And I was like, Oh my God, like five grand for some flowers and some dirt. That's crazy. So I did learn that plants do cost a ton of money. And I spent like a thousand dollars on plants and a tree and everything, but I just, you know,
Gave it the sweat equity. Spent probably like four, five solid working days, I guess, doing this. But it was awesome. You know, you're toast. You're using your body. It feels great. You're dirty. Playing in the dirt is the best. Collecting the rivers next to me with his shovel, collecting worms as I go. He loves, loves wormies. So that's like a fun dad.
you know, something. Um, we always get, Oh, dad, I need a container. Cause I showed him like, we got to get a container for the worms so we can find a pot, put some dirt in it and just collect the worms for that session. And he just looks at them and then we go, Oh, that's a juicy one.
Yeah, he loves bugs. He doesn't think they're gross at all. So, like, you know, he, like, loves to find bugs. It's a potato bug. Dad, it's a potato bug. Yeah, it's a potato. We call them potato bugs. Other people call them roly-polies. You know what I'm talking about? Those bugs? It is nice to be in like a temperate or climate or whatever you call it. Like, like North kind of East climate. Like, because if you're, there's just not that many dangerous things like.
There's no fire ants. You know, we have like bugs that bite you and stuff, but nothing, no spiders going to like poison anybody. There's no tarantulas. There's no scorpions. There's no rattlesnakes. There's no poisonous snakes. Nothing is poisonous. There's no. um bobcats or you know bear i don't know there's like nothing it's just it's just bunnies and squirrels and and the earth is all it's all grass everywhere you know like if you go to like colorado even
But I mean, anywhere south, down south, whatever, everything's spiky, you know, cactus stuff. Like the worst thing we have is like stinging nettle, which is doesn't, it's, you just don't like sit on it. You know, I don't know. So it is nice because you can just like totally get completely covered in mud and dirt and plants. And yeah, the only thing I guess you have to really worry about is poison ivy.
Right. Like that's the only thing that really sucks. Everything else doesn't even suck that much. So, well, yeah, we're just talking about dirt and stuff. So landscaping, it's great. Right. Did that felt great. You know, it's been a grand and then. But I realized that like you, all this stuff you can just find.
You can find small stuff in your yard and grow it bigger, or you can take clippings or how about for, this is just what I want to do in life. You know? So my buddy, Kenny, he does this. He, he takes seeds from fruit. and vegetables that he gets or that people chuck or whatever like one one day he was over and i'm eating a pepper from my garden and or handed him a pepper whatever and he's like can i take these seeds i'm like yeah dude took the seeds and grew a bunch more pepper plants
And then he like fostered him and then he gave him to me this year because he has like an indoor grow box thing, which is like so cool. And he's got this lemon tree that was just from lemon seeds, you know, from a lemon that he has. So he just takes like. He'll take anything. He'll take like, um, celery, just, uh, you know, celery from the grocery store, put the butt in water and it'll start to get, you know, those roots and then.
you know, plant it, foster it, whatever you can. I planted potatoes a couple of years ago, like took just potatoes from the grocery store. You know, you let them sit inside and they get those, they sprout, you know, potatoes just sprout in your kitchen. You can just literally stick them in the dirt and leave them. like i'm not kidding like next time that happens like dig a hole in your yard and shove them in there
and you will have a potato plant that turns into like a bush. And at the end of the year, you yank it out and you got tons of potatoes. So anyway, that stuff for me is so fascinating and so fun and cool. And yeah, just the whole... design of it i built a deck like a few years ago um
And just like kind of even just, it's your little way to be an architect and do something original and use a natural material. So also what I'm saying is like, just do the landscaping yourself and don't even buy the freaking plants. Just find them. grow them from other places, whatever. You can, I'm sure somebody, you know, wants to get rid of like a hosta or a, I don't know, go in, go to a state park and find a bee bomb bush that nobody cares about.
and yank yank it out yank a chunk of it out and just don't do it in the night time you know nobody knows but all that stuff there's a ton of cool perennial flowering stuff um so in the back uh i'm working on like i got a quote for a patio and it was like 15 grand and i was like you know what i'm gonna do it for free because i have tons of flagstone and my neighbors do too my neighbor saw me doing like a flagstone patio and he's like
He's like, take my flagstone and take all my brick. I got a ton of brick. I had a ton of flagstone. It's way in the back. Just take it. So I did. I didn't even ask him. I just, he wasn't even home the day I needed it. And I just took the wheelbarrow to his backyard and loaded up on flagstone and made this nice pad for my grill. That's like perfect. So now I got this little nook. and i've been flagstone looks beautiful so the ethic that i'm trying to develop i thought was going to be
It's like use free stuff, use natural stuff, just dig terraform, you know, weed by hand, no like roundup, just weed by hand or weed, you know, not even weed barrier sucks. I could talk to you all day about how weed barrier sucks. Um, just, yeah, doing stuff kind of natural deal. But so I've been getting into Frank Lloyd Wright a lot and like architecture and stuff. And I love like his use of natural materials and letting materials just be honest and speak for themselves.
You know, he just uses like, he would never have a stone facade basically is what I'm saying. He would never like build a structure out of concrete and then cover it up with some other facade. Like it'll literally just be. raw concrete if it's concrete so concrete is something that i've been like kind of on the fence about but frank lloyd writes all about it he embraces it so i think i might start embracing concrete
Pour a pad here and there. You can do a lot of cool stuff, you know. Jason Beggs is like the most concrete dude in the world. He's made, I think, concrete countertops. His whole floor in his house is concrete. Concrete can be cool, yeah. So anyway.
That's what I spend a lot of my free time doing. And I never really like mentioned in that at all. So this is an episode about the backyard and how awesome it is. Water tables. River just takes the hose and like... has a ball with the hose and the leaf blower i don't know a backyard where a kid can roam free is the most fun a kid can have and then you just get a cage for a baby
And you make it big enough so that they don't like get that mad at you and you give them stuff that's a little dangerous that they like to like have danger time with. But yeah, I had like lunch on the deck today with River and Knox. And we just like sat there on like some like outdoor couch furniture, you know, with, and just like sat there eating our food with the sun shining and the birds chirping. We have a Robin that made a nest on our deck. Hannah loves birds. So like.
I've in the past just taken away because the nest gets so messy. I've just taken them away. I'm not, I haven't like ripped apart a live nest, but they'll start to build the nest and I'll like clean it out. She like fostered it. And like this Robin who has babies, like she watched the whole process and they like feed the babies like right in front of us while we're eating.
like 10 feet away. They're just, the mom's literally like feeding the baby. The mom's always gathering food for these babies in our yard, which is pretty cool. River and I planted grass. I taught him how to plant grass. He loves that because you can spread the seed and like shake it. Um, he did use fertilizer yesterday for the first time. He was pretty amped about that. He loved it. It just looks like a fun drink that he would die if he drank, but it's like this blue, whatever.
he fertilized and he liked that so anyway i could go on and on and on can you tell um i just all i want to do is just be in my backyard with the boys chilling that's not true i want somebody to watch nox When Knox is in the yard with me, it's way more stressful. When it's just me and River, it's awesome. It's so awesome.
Parenting has gotten so much better because of my backyard. My life has gotten so much better because of my backyard. And we lived in apartments for the first big chunk of our marriage. never had a backyard like the first one was in the city like in a high-rise kind of thing sort of and there's like a loft apartment and the other one was a house kind of but there had had no yard and it was like there were three units in it
So I remember like grilling in the driveway and stuff and it just kind of sucks. And I remember thinking like, man, my life would be so much better if I had a backyard. And it's so true. It just is. Like I knew it would be, and it did turn out to be true. It's so fun to just like do yard work and dig in the dirt and get dirty.
you know use your body and muscles and stuff so anyway this has been a sales pitch for having a backyard and just a self-indulgent thought spew on what i've been up to lately when i'm not working on the computer i'll see you