yard work, cut a tree down & built more raised planting beds

Feels good to be outside again! Ground is still a bit of a mucky mess and all my damn boots have holes from stepping on nails and such, so i've been working with wet feet all week, not the most comfortable thing. Ya I stepped on a whole bunch of nails during the process of cleaning up the old garage that burnt down many a year ago on the side of the house, luckily not many hurt my foot too bad but they did a number on all my work boots. Ordered some new boots last night so looking forward to them.
So ya this weeks almost over, they just fly by, and most of the work I've done has been landscape related, I did put some siding up on the front of the house, the left side, had to get the edge trim board stripped & primed then re-installed, just have a little more to do up there then i'll take a pic of that.
Got the chain saw goin and cut down yet another oak, I wanted to build some raised bed planting boxes for along the back corner of the property and this one tree blocks alot of sun to that area so down it came. I think the core of the tree was still frozen because it was pretty tough to cut through once I got a few inches in. And like a dummy I built one of raised beds before cutting the tree down and of course the tree fell on the corner of it and nailed it in the ground about a half a foot, I had already leveled it, filled in with dirt and filled in the support post holes with gravel, so the tree hitting it screwed it up level wise, couldn't quite get it re-leveled but its close. Surprisingly the tree didn't break the box though so that was good.

The Tree

A view of the backyard from the driveway, ya half the driveway is full of my building supplies 

and some junk I have to burn. God I love the wooded area i'm surrounded by!

Rock lined raised bed along the driveway and wood raised beds, that rock bed is full of plants, one wood bed is full of strawberries and the other potted plants waiting for a permanent home.

The two new raised beds and some piles of wood from the tree

 The two new beds, one day i'd like to grow alot of veges, but for now i'll be using these to grow a ton of zinnias, ya I like flowers ok, I enjoy growing things, its pretty cool what comes from a tiny seed and I like making the yard look nice, and trying to earn some brownie points with the wife by bringing home some flowers! I'll probably build one more box in this line, theres a few other flowers i'd like to try and grow so I need one as a testing area. All of the boxes i've built so far have been with deck boards I got for free off of craigslist, and free 4x4 cut offs from the dump. Love making useful things from free materials! 

These new beds are big, 6'x8', the others I built last year to the side of the driveway are 4'x8'.

A nice day in the mid 60's!

So it was a pretty nice day today, in the mid 60's after lunch, was thrilled to take off my sweatshirt and just be working in a t-shirt! Its the little things! Just hoping for more of this nice weather, but i hear we're suppost to be back down in the mid 40's tomorrow and cloudy with a chance of rain. I didn't make a huge dent in the house but did make a little progress, one thing i've been dying to do is get those upper master bedroom windows back in, and i did just that! I love the small 4 over 6 windows on each side of the middle larger full pane windows. These are some more of the houses' original windows which I painstakingly restored. One of the small 4 pane windows had busted out muntins, so I just took some from one of the old 12 over 12 windows which was completely beyond repair but had some useful muntins so i cut and fit those back in to the frame nicely.
After fitting all the windows I installed some more siding on that same side, its going to get tricky because I have to keep the addition in mind, that small shed roof on the back will be gone and the roof pitch will be changing on the back half, so that upper right quarter of this side will be extending and i'll have to wait to add siding to that area so that it blends nicely into the addition. I primed a few of the boards the other day as well, the light grey is the factory primer and the darker is sherwin williams oil primer, swear by that stuff and don't trust the quality of factory primer. I run over the factory primer with some sandpaper real quick before applying the new stuff. I also set and fill all nail holes. I have no power here yet so I have to hand nail all the siding, plus I bought an almost full 5 gallon bucket of siding nails for like $15 off craigslist awhile back so they are going to good use now. I bought a 5 gallon bucket full of framing nails like 8 years ago at a tag sale for $1!! Didn't really have a big need for them at the time but I couldn't pass up the deal and I sure have a good use for them now! Heres a few pics of the windows and added siding...