Flowers, Plants, Gardening

Normally, I am NOT a gardener. I typically don't enjoy getting out and pulling weeds, tilling soil, digging holes, etc. I really haven't enjoyed trying to decide what I want IN my flower beds. And I don't relish spending the money on it either.

I think that may have changed in the past few days.

A while ago, we pulled up EVERY plant, bush, shrub (whatever you want to call them) surrounding our home. I hated what we had, so my personal opinion is that barren looks better than the mess that was there previously. I have, however, started to get sick of the way the house looks with nothing but weeds growing in place of those bushes and junk. Our lawn looks great; Patrick does a great job with that. And while he gets these grand ideas about the beds, he hasn't done anything except complain about them. So, last Saturday I poured Evan a nice cold cup of juice water (as it was really hot and muggy that afternoon) and headed to Lowe's to find SOMETHING to plant. I bought some pansies and Mexican Heather for the bed around the tree in our front yard and some "monkey" grass and caladias for part of the bed in the back yard. (I've pretty much focused on annuals for this time of year because 1.) it's so late in the season and 2.) I don't know exactly what I want.)

I didn't just run right out and plant these things when I got them home. In fact, they were probably in danger of being left in the containers and dying because I was SO unmotivated to do anything with them. Pat said he planned to plant them anyway, so that worked for me.

Well, by Monday nothing was planted. Oddly enough, I got ants in my pants and decided to head out front and start planting. Pat was barbequeing (did I spell that right?) so Evan and I headed out front to plan out the plot. (Some planning it took...I had four pots of pansies and four pots of heather. Let's just say it's pretty well balanced and symmetrical.) Other than having to holler at Evan occasionally to come back to where we were (instead of moving toward the Autoban that is our street), we had an absolute BLAST. He helped me dig and put the plants in the holes (well, okay, he just kind of dropped/threw the first one, so I did the rest of the placement), and then cover them back up with dirt and potting soil. Evan pretty much decided he was in charge of the potting soil. He was so cute...reaching in this big bag and getting his big little handfuls and throwing it on the bed. Then as I moved farther around the circle, he tried to drag the bag and got REALLY mad when he couldn't quite get it. After we got finished planting, he helped me pick up the trash and get the boarder all cleaned off. By the time that was all said and done, he (both of us, actually, since he threw potting soil in my hair) was a MESS and I literally had to hose him down.

Last night we planted the things in the back. This time he had his little pail and hand rake. He just worked and worked and worked. His favorite thing was getting water out of the faucet in his pail and watering the plants. He got pretty irritated with me when I hooked the hose up so I could really water them because then he couldn't get his pail under there to get more. He didn't quite grasp the concept - and wouldn't listen - as to how he could get more water from the hose.

Anyway, all this has really made me start thinking about what I want to plant, baskets I want to get, and how to arrange things. This is a true first for me and I'm pretty excited about it.

Now if I can just manage to keep the dog out of the flowers in the back...