A Weekend at Home... sort of

Ah!  We finally had almost an entire weekend at home.  Between kids activities and travel, we have not had 2 days in a row home for a looooong time.   Did we relax during this amazing 80 degree weekend?  Of course not!  Hours were spent cleaning up the yard (the previous owners did nothing for years), trying to get the pond squared away, getting the swamp cooler ready, and pruning the grapes.  We rocked the weekend though and it is coming along - as you can see from the rooftop photo I took of the back corner area.  Maybe we'll get to relax in those lawn chairs in the coming weeks!  It is beautiful and so green right now - I love spring:)

Here are just a few rows of the vineyard - there are 12 total and we thought we may be low on grapes this year, but it looks like they are all budding out after pruning, so I think we'll be knee deep in grapes by late summer.  Grape-stomping party anyone?

These 3 braved the pond  in an attempt to fix the center 'island' (it was pretty ugly) and get a new waterfall going.  The pond is our nemesis!  We love it, but not quite sure what to do with it - it's very large.  After winter we had an abundance of gold fish (like 100's), but we haven't seen any for a couple weeks.  We have seen 100's of tadpoles and a few bullfrogs though, so we assumed they had eaten all the fish.  Wrong -we saw a few swimming around the kids while they were in the pond.  At any rate, 100's of tadpoles are too much so we are catching and donating to a local pet store and maybe some homeschoolers who want a science project.  

Is this guy eating all the fish?  Guess not!  FYI, bullfrogs do not sound pretty when they croak at night - kind of like a dying cow.

This is Plato the turtle - he also lives in the pond.

And this guy - (bad picture, I know) landed Friday evening on the island.  Super cool - it is a night heron!  Maybe he is eating the goldfish?

Here's what hubby and I wanted to do after the weekend of work - sit and enjoy a bottle of wine from the top porch.  It didn't happen as we had to drive the kids to separate activities until 9 pm.  This was taken a while ago - but it makes a pretty photo.  Maybe next weekend?!  Enjoy the week:)