So I am a city girl. There, I said it. I’ve lived in Las Vegas since I was 12 (so 23 years) and Las Vegas just isn’t nature-ee. I mean, there is nature, you just have to look for it, and I rarely did. Here, in Bend, nature is everywhere. Like, seriously, everywhere.

My backyard is pretty awesome. And maybe I say that because my Vegas backyard was like [ ] this big, but I absolutely love my new yard. My long term plan is to have a garden with lots of yummy veggies for us to grow and eat. Last week the twinzies and I went out for our first ever weeding party. Now, laugh if you must, but I know nothing about gardening, weeding, grooming, landscaping, or anything else yard related. City girl, remember. =)

So the twinzies and I head out with our two garden tools, a small hand shovel and hand rake (they had their plastic shovels and rakes). For two hours we pulled weeds, moved old branches, piled up TONS of old leaves, and much to my horror, discovered MANY MANY MANY gross bugs.

Now you know I hate me some bugs. I mean, I am scared shitless of them. Like, remember the time I came to visit my friend Julie in Hood River and knocked myself out trying to get away from the spiders in the corn maize? Yeah, I really really hate all things bug/spider/insect.

So I will admit I was very proud of myself for continuing on after I saw (from left to right - and these might be the totally wrong names of the bugs, but since I have no clue what they are this is what I call them): a centipede, beetle, very long worm (like as long as my forearm), millipede, roly poly (one of the few bugs I don’t mind), snail, some weird grasshopper, SPIDERS GALORE, and poop. Yes, there was dried up poop everywhere and when I went digging it turned up fresh poop. Very fragrant to say the least. Or as Heaten said, “poooo-eeee Mama”.

Oh yeah, and some weird larvae of some sort.

We even found some weird mushroom thing that looks more like a you know what (since this is my kids blog I better keep it PG rated). =)

Despite the gross bugs I kept on trucking and made three pretty large piles of debris. Go me right? Ha, I barely made a dent in the corner of the area. Like barely.

Heaten LOVED being outside “working” and was so proud that he was helping his Mama in the garden.

Shenzie liked it too, but she was more interested in trying to kill all of the bugs we found. She is an expert bug killer!

I see many, many hours more of digging, pulling, and getting creeped the f out by the bugs…….but, I live in nature now so I might as well start embracing it!!!