It's That Time Of The Year Again

We've escaped the long and cold winter and spring is finally here!  This of course means I have to pay attention to the outside of my house again.  I've got a handful of projects I want to work on this year, including a couple of big ones.

• We have a large tree in our front yard that is dead and needs to be removed.  It has actually been dead for several months now but I wanted to wait until it warmed up before I had it removed.  That time has come and I've already called the tree people to come take it down.  This project was easy.
• My garage was filthy from all of the snow and salt this past winter, which subsequently meant we were tracking it into the house.  I had been wanting to clean my garage floor for months but wanted to wait until the snow was gone for the year.  I was able to get that done last week, so second check on the to do list for the spring.
• The mulch around our house is OK I think.  It is at least plentiful.  The mulch around our trees, however, is minimal to none.  It needs to be re-mulched which will basically be like starting from scratch.  This is one of the biggest projects I have lined up that I hope to have done within the next month or so.
• We really need to pull up some of the plants around our house and replace them with new ones.  I honestly don't know if we are going to get to that this year.  We might be able to pull up some of the plants this year but as far as planting goes that might get pushed back another year (Doing such a thing on the 3rd spring you've lived in a house isn't too bad is it?).
• We have outdoor lights that shine on our house and some of our trees but I haven't been able to figure out how to get them to work since I've lived in this house.  I really want to get those working and one of my friends said he'd help.
• I wanted to put down spring fertilizer on the lawn today but didn't get around to it.  I spent the afternoon finally replacing that window that broke during the polar vortex.  Of course that required a trip to Lowe's because I broke some of the pieces to the frame so I had to buy replacement parts.  I screwed around with that for probably 2 hours and honestly I'm crossing my fingers that it even holds up because I don't think my replacement is put together as well as the original.  I guess we will find out soon.  I also cleaned up all of the coal and wood the previous owners had dumped around one of the trees in the yard.  Yes, it took me a year to clean that up.

My list is probably short compared to some people's lists but it turns out when you have a full time job plus two part time jobs plus two infants getting things done can take a while.  I typically only have one to two days per week to get stuff done (usually it's just one) and if it happens to rain on that day (which commonly happens in spring) things typically get pushed back another week.  Truthfully with my new part time weekend job I am really starting to ask my self if it is better for me to work my normal job and pay someone to do my home projects.   If I have to work either way it might be better for me to do my normal job and leave the big landscaping jobs to the professionals.