Pruning

Tolga and I were a strong cleaning team. I weeded the flowerbeds, he trimmed the rose bushes. Tolga shoveled the mound of dirt from the front of the yard ( a by-product from Hakan's storage project), and wheeled it to the hole in the back of the yard ( a by-product from Baba's flower-bed project). Tolga mowed the rest of the yard (Hakan had started it and said he'd finish it tomorrow . . . that was four days ago). There was a pile of rubble just outside our yard from the third floor. Hakan had taken it form the yard and dumped it next to the yard. It was an eye sore, so Tolga and I picked and shoveled the broken concrete into the wheel barrow and hauled it to a rubble pile a few blocks away. Tolga mowed this area, and I hauled some branches to a pile for burning later.

Our last project was the balcony. A normally pleasant area to sit, it was filled with junk from the third floor storage. Mostly Hakan's things from his summer work. Tolga and I went through it making piles of garbage and restacking the things more compactly. We threw away hoses, old fish bait that was drawing a lot of cats, and lots of plastic planters. We emptied out the new storage to restack things to fit - but we still had to leave many things on the balcony because the new storage room still doesn't have a roof.

We were happy with the job we had done. Hakan came that evening with his wife, Yesim, and said, "Wow! It's clean!" And I said, tabi which means "of course". Then he asked, "Where did you put all the rocks?"

We are leaving tonight, Tolga is grouting the bathroom now. His mom and dad are playing cards. We've finished the projects that needed to be done for now. Now, we'll wait for things to grow.