DIY - Day 2

So, I think we need to have a team of scientists come out and study the dirt in our backyard, as it is easily the hardest dirt I have ever encountered. Our shovels were literally bouncing off of the soil as we were attempting to dig it up and loosen it in order to plant the bushes, even with our full body weight on top of the shovels. I'm sure it doesn't help that we haven't had rain in 26 days and the sun has literally been baking the ground the whole time. We quickly had to admit that we were beat. We needed more power.

Abnormally hard dirt, meet your nemesis:

For a mere $42 we were able to rent that lovely gas-powered tiller from Home Depot. It still needed to be a little more powerful, but it got the job done faster than we would have without it. It did more "shaving" of the top layer of dirt than actually tilling it, which turned out to be a slower process than I anticipated. Wetting the soil seemed to help. Some.
Now we know better for the future--there is no such thing as "too much power", especially in a landscaping tool.

Here I go, spreading mulch:

And the finished product:

DIY - Day 1

This weekend was used up by our first real landscaping project for the house. I have never built a flowerbed before, but we understood the mechanics of it, so I bought some bushes from work I have been wanting to plant outside our breakfast area windows for a while, we got our soil, mulch and another shovel, and set to work. Only two trips to Home Depot for this one!

The project was only supposed to consume an afternoon. However, as we started clearing sod (sans sod cutter), I began to realize that this was going to be a job for at least one power tool after all. We did not end up renting the sod cutter because I figured it was such a small area, a sod cutter would have been what my brain labled as "overkill". Once we began clearing the grass, I realized overkill would have been better than what we had carved out for ourselves. That sod did not want to leave!

Here is Brian taking a break next to the beginnings of the new flowerbed:

Here I am, raking out the last of the grass runners:

My beautiful Ixora bushes:


I cannot get over how gorgeous these flowers are!

The rest would have to wait until the morning...

Test

Testing to see if my mobile blogging feature works...

A Housewarming

Our friends, Aaron and Jessica, have bought and are nesting into their first house and we were lucky enough to be invited to the housewarming party last Saturday! We braved the elements to get there (it had been pouring buckets for about two days in a row, and in case you haven't heard, Pasadena floods a little in that kind of weather) and it was totally worth it to be able to hang out with Aaron and Jess and Matt and Natalie. Here's some of what we drove through on the way over: There was a really good turnout at the party--lots of friends and family and people from work came out to celebrate with Aaron and Jess. They had a ton of good food and some really tasty spiked punch that Jess claims to have just 'thrown together'. Here is the only picture I could get of her and Aaron together:

Matt, looking classic as always...

Brian and Natalie demonstrating how inebriated they are NOT...yet...

With the exception of Jess's grandfather in the background, all of these people about to do a shot are teachers:

Aaron letting Matt feel his warm breath in his ear, and Matt liking it...

Aaron says, "Thanks for the hooch!"

Natalie and I cozying up in the garage for a photo:

Nothing Says Easter Like Drinking and Fighting

Last weekend, on Easter, Amy turned 21. We went out to eat downtown at the Spaghetti Warehouse for a late lunch and had third row hockey tickets, right behind the opposing team's bench. (I have since vowed to sit down here for more games, because it is a completely different atmosphere.)

Julian, Amy and Penny at lunch.

Amy and her fiance, Julian.

The other side of the table.

Birthday Tiramisu!

At the game, there was one good fight and the Aeros won the game against San Antonio, which sent them to the playoffs! It was a really exciting game and I can't wait for next season.

Happy with the seats!

Hockey fight!

Amy & Chilly, the Aeros mascot.

We win!

To Kill a Ruellia

When Brian and I bought this house we are living in now, I was very happy with the landscaping out front. The plants were all mature and very healthy. Over the past year and a half, we have decided that maybe they're er...too happy. One of them in particular comes to mind. Ruellia, aka Britton's Wild Petunia or the Mexican Bluebell, was taking over the front bed at an alarming rate, despite having been aggressively pruned back. Then the entire plant began to fall apart from the middle outward and just looked sloppy, as well as completely obscuring a poor defenseless boxwood. It had to go.

Fortunately, I had the ideal conditions for azaleas in their spot, so it was settled. We dug out the ruellia to the best of our ability and the azaleas went in:

They are a little smaller than the other mature plants in the bed, but once they fill in, I am sure they will be wonderful.

As I suspected when we dug them up, the ruellia continue to be a problem and are quite invasive. Here are new shoots coming up around my baby azalea bushes:

So this weekend the nasty plant put in by the obviously sadistic previous homeowners will be painted with the most concentrated, deadly RoundUp I can purchase without a license. And I will keep repeating this process until it is all gone forever.

On a fun plant note, we have inadvertently been propagating sago palms on one end of our driveway, thanks to what I have determined is our hussy female sago. I am also going to attempt to dig these up and pot them until they become established and possibly plant them in the backyard or give them away to friends or family who might want one. There are three of them--here they are at the base of my tramp plant:

Of course...

...the cat would have to make her debut at some point sooner or later in this blog. Frances was the name I gave to the cat I dissected my senior year of high school and swore that if I ever got another cat (other than the live one I already had at that time) I would name it likewise. Probably sounds creepier than it actually is. So my live cat went on to kitty heaven shortly after I went off to college after 17 long years of what probably amounts to an adventurous cat life. (The dissected cat was disposed of in a manner I am not sure of by my anatomy teacher.)

Many years later, my brother found two kittens under a dumpster in Luling while passing through. He picked them both up and took them home with him, much to his rommate's dismay, being deathly allergic to the poor little things. My brother, having a huge heart for helpless animals of all kinds, begged us to take one or both of them, and my husband agreed to take the "ankle-biter" of the two. I made good on my promise and named her Frances.

Now let me make something clear. We are not weird cat people. I don't have forty cats or even two. I have one. I enjoy both cats and dogs, as does my husband, but he is too allergic to dogs to even try and deal with. So it will probably be only cats for the rest of my life, which I can deal with, except for the unintended consequences of being bought all kinds of cat stuff by people that find out I have a cat and assume I want kitty everything. It's similar to when you say, 'Oh, I think lambs are so cute,' or something like that, and the wrong person hears you say it, so you are then resigned to a life of lamb-related gifts from that person for your kitchen forever. (To this day, it is the reason I have not bought a ceramic chicken anything for my kitchen.) To be fair, I know this pigeon-holed gift-giving happens to people with dogs, too, but I don't think it happens as often or to the extreme that it does to people with cats.

I also don't want to give the impression that I am not nice to my cat or that I don't love her. I do love her, but she is not the friendliest animal to people outside of me and my husband and definitely does things on her schedule. Even on the days I find her most remarkable, I have to remind myself that she is more or less a typical cat. We buy her stuff and she either loves it so much she tears it apart, or it goes unused most days of the year. Her bed falls into the latter category, so we have taken to storing her toys in it, which my husband claims is the reason she doesn't lay in it. It is a vicious cycle and we have placed the bed in all sorts of locations in an attempt to make it more appealing to her. Nothing seems to help. So you can imagine how hard I laughed and how perplexed I was when last night, my husband and I happened to look over from the couch and saw this:


As you can see, she decided that despite the presence of just about every toy she has, that it was time to lay in that bed.


I laughed so hard I cried.

Peer Pressure...

...I haven't succumbed to it since my much earlier days, and even then it didn't happen very often. I have set this blog up at the gentle goading from my friend, Natalie, and mainly so that I can post comments on her little blog.

I hope you relish in what you have created, young lady. Never forget--no good deed goes unpunished!

Since this specific post is being done at work on my lunch hour time limit, I cannot even begin to describe what this entire blog monstrosity will center around--probably just what me and the hubs are up to, for the benefit of family and friends who we cannot always see, talk to or be with, but miss every day and wish to keep updated. I know--boooooorrrring. *yawn* I am not making any promises, however, because while it may start out as this, I can definitely see it being an organic thing that will change many times and take on a life of its own as my will sees fit.

Ok. Enough verbal diarrhea for one day.