Tumbleweed Town

We live in a very windy part of the state.

It's not windy all the time.  In fact, it's not windy MOST of the time, but whenever a storm comes or cold front is moving in, WATCH OUT!  We have gail-force winds for about 4 hours.

About a month after we first moved in, we experienced our first wind storm and this is what happened in the space of about 2 HOURS!

These dang tumbleweeds blew in our backyard from the neighboring empty lots, swirled and swirled around and then stuck themselves right up against our house.

This was the view from inside the house.

We were scolded by our landscaper for letting the tumbleweeds gather like this.  He thought that we had neglected them for weeks and weeks and said they were a fire hazard.  He about fell over dead when I told him this happened the day before in the space of a couple hours.

And here's what happens if your swing set isn't heavily bolted down.  :(

Now that the empty lots have filled in around us, we don't get the tumbleweeds as bad but it's still a major clean-up project every spring. 

All these (and the umbrella) were cleaned out of ONE window well.

What do we do with all the tumbleweeds? 

They go right over the fence and Lehi City comes along and picks them up.

While the boys were cleaning up tumbleweeds, Lucy and I were busy planting flowers.

I let her do a lot of them all herself this year.

After a two or three weekends of cleaning up, weeding, hauling and spreading 3 loads of mulch, and planting, here is the finished product.

We finally, finally planted a very small vegetable garden this year.  I'm so excited for tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, peas, carrots, and green peppers.  Josh and Jake are mostly excited about the Habanero peppers.   (That is....if we don't kill everything from our lack of planting experience)

The flowers:

Until the next wind storm....