Home Alone and Gardening inspiration!

I'm sure it will come as no surprise to many of you that I simply couldn't force myself to stay in bed for a full week or on bed rest for that amount of time. Although, even if I was the type of person to be okay staying on the couch or bed for extended period of time, the fact that my husband was going out of town for the majority of the week meant that I would have been alone in bed or on the couch for twenty-four hours a day. Needless to say, that wasn't flying very well with me. So as of this last Monday, I headed back to school.

Honestly, I was particularly nervous going back to school because I was uncertain whether or not I'd be able to make the drive there without excruciating pain. I truly hoped my dear husband would just say, "It's okay, I'll drive you." But he didn't, and looking back, I'm glad he didn't. My freedom and movement is back!

Now before you start thinking that I've had surgery and I've recovered, don't get your hopes up. That's not happened. However, we are heading up to Atlanta this week to meet with the doctors up there and assuming everything goes according to plan, my last day of school this year will be on the 12th of May and I'll have surgery in Atlanta on the 14th or 16th Yay!

And it's been interesting trying to plan for the remainder of the school year, while knowing that I'll be out for the last or so. But so far I've made plans for my student's work to get to me. I've had the technology specialist set the grading program on my laptop so that I can grade work from home, and I've made arrangement for having my grades exported so that my students will get their yearly averages on time.

Having done all of this adult, responsible stuff in order to prepare for my impending surgery, I find myself having to admit that there's that little bit of excitement within me that jumping for joy that my surgery is just around the corner. There's also the childlike part of me that is particularly excited that my summer break begins early. A long summer! YES! So soon, friends I will be on the mend and raring to go like never before. I can hardly wait to be able to do all the things that my body won't let me do right now. I know I still have a month or so until my body will let me cut loose and do whatever, but nonetheless the light is shining brightly through the end of the tunnel.

However, all of this back illness hasn't slowed me down as much as some of you may think. In fact, it's inspired a new hobby. What hobby, you may ask? Gardening. Now I know you're thinking, but y'all had a garden last year and you've already planted this year's and told us all about it.

So let me explain. But other than the garden we truly had no real landscaping done in our yard. However, as you know my Mother-in-law started helping us begin to do some landscaping when we offered and truly made a flower bed for us in our front yard (complete with landscaping timbers.

Then a couple of weekends later she dug out around one of our pine trees and planted flowers around it. Last weekend we added pine straw around the flowers because they were frying in the sun and the moisture in their soil was evaporating too quickly.

And in between these ventures she brought us four pots of flowers. Two for the front porch and two large pots to sit by the back door.

(Flowers by the front door above) You can see the flower pots by the back door in the same picture that you see the flowers around the trees by the back door.

With all of this yard work going on, my interest in beautifying (yes, it's not a real word) our yard began to grow. (intentional pun)

And since Josh was gone most of the week I had plenty of time (after school) to work in the yard. So Thursday evening, I decided it was time. I found flowers galore at Walmart and Home Depot and began digging up the ground around the two pine trees in our front yard. By the end of the evening, these areas were completely upturned and new flowers had been placed around both trees.(The second tree I conquered in the front yard, the first looked very similar)

And ya know, I so enjoyed doing that on Thursday evening that I decided to give it a go on Friday too. So last night, once again armed with flowers (this time from Lowe's, hey I'm an equal opportunity flower shopper) I began digging out around pine trees. Last night I tackled the two trees by our back door. And by the time Josh arrived home, the ground was upturned, the grass around the trees had disappeared and flowers were beautifying the area around both trees.

But the landscaping adventure doesn't end there. Today Josh got up and cut the grass...and then came in side to ask me where I wanted the flowers we'd not yet planted. And being the helpful person I am, I went outside to supervise. Thankfully, Josh had already found homes for our two new Rose bushes. So now we have five of those: a bright pink, a white, a red, a lavender and a yellow. Wow! These are spaced appropriately along the wall of our home.

But the day lilies that I'd purchased had yet to find their way into the ground. SO...we found a new home for them by a pine tree that had not yet been graced with flowers.

While we were working on these wonderful landscaping projects, I convinced my dear husband that we needed to rescue the volunteer deciduous trees that had popped up next to a few of our pine trees. We also tried to rescue a volunteer oak tree from behind the bushes, but it's roots were too large and vast...so only the deciduous trees by the pine ones got new homes in our back yard.

So after doing all of this hard work and conquering the tree-transplanting this morning, Josh and I found it only fitting that we eat lunch at the White Rose. Then we headed over to his Momma's to see her new roof. They had a tin roof put on their house, thanks to the tax refund. We helped her pressure wash part of the house and discussed paint colors as well.

Being like every other female on the planet, now that her house has a new roof she's decided that it also needs a fresh coat of paint. So we helped out by giving our opinions on paint samples, and on wall paper samples because she's also going to re-paper the kitchen.

But back to our outdoor endeavors. After leaving my Mother-in-laws we headed back to Lowe's and picked up mini-picket fence pieces. I push Josh in charge of figuring out how much we needed of that and he came pretty close. We only need another piece or two to make it go all the garden.

Since we were there and because I'm feeling vegetationally inspired we also looked at a trellis for our grape vine. What grape vine, I'm sure you are wondering. :) Well, I've found one behind our boxwood bushes so we are going to transplant it too and now it has a lovely place to grow! :)

(Note the orange day lilies, and the deciduous trees. One tree is poking out to the right side of the pine tree the other is over on the far left side near our new trellis. The trellis is for our soon to be transplanted volunteer grape vine).

Honestly, I have to admit our yard is looking pretty good, if I do say so myself. I believe Josh's Momma may bring by another couple baskets of hanging flowers that may find a home in our open carport...other than that...and a few hydrangea bushes our yard is completely revamped. Well, as far as the plants go. Now I just have to figure out if I want to paint the front porch swing and picnic table and if so what colors I'm going to paint them.

However, the hydrangea bushes are going to have to wait to join our vegetation family for a month or two because, we are planning on putting siding on the house this summer and they'd be living in a location where they'd be trampled as Josh and his Dad put on this new siding. However, it's exciting to know that soon, oh so soon, our yard will have hydrangeas!!! Yay!

I'm confident that Josh was a bit surprised when he arrived home last night to discover how many flowers had multiplied in our yard since he'd been gone. But I think he was please. And you know the strangest thing about this is that as a child I hated yard work. I would do whatever needed to be done in the house without a complaint...but that outside stuff...that was men's work. YUCK! I know that my parents and particularly my Momma (who is also a gardener) never imagined that I would follow in her footsteps regarding this pursuit. Truly it's surprised me too that I'm enjoying it as much as I am. But I am....

Apparently not only did I inherit a bad disc (in my back) from my Momma, but I also inherited a love of gardening. Who would have thunk it? :) And so it's nice to see our house shaping up inside in out. So thank you Momma, for passing along this passion. I'm certainly enjoying my new found hobby. And also let me say to all of our friends. If you are ever in the area, give us a buzz and come on by. We'd love to show you our home, our yard and enjoy a bit to eat with you. But until then, I'd love to hear all about the adventures each of you are experiencing in this wonderful spring season.

And assuming that the plants don't grow feet and walk away, I will fill you all in on this next week's adventures as they occur.