Yard and Connor

Wow we got a lot accomplished this weekend:
Friday Peter had the day off and so did I so we ran some errands and did stuff around the house.  We borrowed Peter's dad's truck while he was out of town-While returning home with the truck Peter got pulled over and received a fix it ticket....apparently all three brake lights were out on the truck...oops.  We used the truck anyway and picked up a load of amended soil for our front yard.  We headed out to Evergreen Nursery, got a load of dirt and picked up a grape vine, a raspberry bush and some shrubs.  We went looking for a dwarf blood orange tree but only found standard ones so we bought everything else instead :)  Back at home we planted plants.  Peter unloaded the truck.  Then we ran to Home Depot and Costco and picked up a few more plants.  We also went to Armstrong Gardens to look for fuschias but we came home empty handed there...we might go back on Monday and get some though.  So basically Friday was a shopping day and we started planting some things.  Oh yes we bought an orange tree at Home Depot, not a blood orange, but a dwarf regular orange.  We plan on going back and special ordering a blood orange soon.  (Above the apricot tree surrounded by shrubs.)

 The front yard...look all the roses are in bloom!

 The raspberry bush I picked up at the nursery and then divided into this pot.

 So Saturday morning rolls around. Peter used a pick axe to dig up our front yard-the area that we will intall grass in soon (hopefully). We go to pick up a blood orange tree that my mom has...but Peter decides he doesn't want it, so we replant it in a deeper hole.  Okay now off to drop the truck off and to tell David of his fix it ticket.  While there we pick some oranges off of their tree and oh how yummy they are.  We left with a bag full.  Then it was naptime, or so I thought.  Connor got a two minute power nap on the way to grandma and grandpa's house and thought that was all he needed...arg!  He sat in bed for roughly 30 minutes and then his "nap" was over.  We went back to the front yard to survey our mess and to plant more...but we didn't have any cactus soil or soil amendments for fruit trees...so off to Home Depot we ventured once again.  With a quick trip to Costco to pick up some birthday presents for nephews and a niece.  At Home Depot I picked up some pretty white ground cover flowers and two bags of soil.  Peter gathered up parts to install sprinklers for our grass.  At some point while heading to the registers we had six long tubes of pvc piping barely balancing on the cart.  Peter turns a corner and one starts to fall.  A worker at Home Depot comes over to help and knocks two more off the cart.  Peter grabs for them and then another worker comes over to help and pretty soon all six pvc pipes are on the ground. I had to laugh.

Back at home we planted our plants, watered and cleaned up our mess.  Our neighbors said it looked like our yard was coming along.  Yeah I'll second that.  Our roses are in bloom and its obvious that we are doing something with the mounds of dirt we keep digging up.  I hope to have grass in by Easter, but that might be asking too much as Peter is helping Chris and Mary move next weekend...but it's still my goal.

 Above-Celery, below cilantro that Connor keeps digging up.

 More cilantro that we've used, planted more, but Connor thinks that's a good spot to play with a shovel so we'll see what survives.

 Last month the majority of our pea plants got some nasty bug or disease on them.  They turned white and all the peas were gray and gross looking.  I ripped out all the affected plants, which left our pea collection a bit bare, but every weekend we still get about a half bag of peas.  We used to get about 2 bags full.  Eh oh well, you win some you lose some.  When the peas die out, I'm going to plant a grape vine.

 The grape vine anxiously waiting

 Costco had succulents on sale for pretty cheap, so we bought three largeish containers to fill up one of our window boxes.

 The previous weekend we bought these fuscias at Armstrong for $14 each.  We went back this weekend and they were all hanging in baskets being sold for $25 each...ARG!  We should've bought more when we had the chance.

 This is a boysenberry root with a bud on it....we're so excited!  You can't buy boysenberries in the stores around here.

 This little pepper came out of nowhere.  I didn't plant it in my azalea pot and yet there it is.

 Strawberries!  Yes we get strawberries pretty regularly.  Connor goes out and finds all the good ones daily.

 He also likes to help water the garden.

 These are white radishes.  They're called Easter Egg radishes...so appropriate.  They're planted in the same area as the peas, but these two look the best as they are not covered by the peas, like most of the other radish seeds.

 Here's the area that is going to be grass.  And you can see all of our roses...well most of them at least.  They're all in bloom except one I think.

Connor's photo of his favorite book.  We ordered this online and it has 10 Biscuit books inside it.  We read it every night and many times throughout the day.

 

 One evening while getting ready for bed we noticed Connor had lined up all of his binkies.  We were down to two at one point so I have no idea where all of these came from.  We keep throwing out the green ones as he bites holes in them.  These are for bedtime and nap time only.  He enjoys having one in his mouth and one in each hand to play with before falling asleep.  He enjoys switching them around too.  Lately he has been climbing into bed to retrieve these during the day, or he'll sit in bed and play with them.