My Green Thumb

Spring seemed to come considerably early to Virginia this year. I was excited to work in my yard and get it looking good. I knew it would be fun to take Autumn to the nursery to pick out all of our supplies and then work together outside. I soon realized I was more ambitious than I probably should have in my "condition", but over the next week, anytime I felt extra sore or exhausted I just looked at my hard work and beamed with pride!

Autumn and I headed out to a local nursery to get all of our goods. I like it for my starter vegetable plants and flowers. I got 32 Inpatients for only $16! Everything is grown in house and I love supporting a local business. Autumn made lots of "suggestions" of items we should by as she stocked up her tray, but she was a great help.

After leaving the nursery, my car became over run with flowers and plants! We made one more stop at Walmart for less expensive mulch, which I managed to load onto my cart by myself. I was able to slide it right onto my cart and able to find a nice gentleman to load it into my trunk for me. I've been trying to be good about not doing any heavy lifting...

When we got home, I set up the pool outside for Autumn so she could swim and play while I got to work. Weeding, digging out the flower beds, putting in the flowers, trimming the bushes, mowing the lawn - you name it! She took a sudden interest in what I was doing, and was actually a great help weeding and helping dig the holes for the flowers.

Don't worry - we've since upgraded her pretty pathetic pool.

We were outside all afternoon. I had to sit down and take lots of breaks. Autumn and I ate many Popsicles that afternoon and it was one of the few times I didn't mind "accidentally" being sprayed by the hose. My Dad stopped by to bring me the hedge trimmers and asked me, "So, why aren't you having Adam do all this??" Well, the short answer is I like doing it! It's an art project to me and I like improving on things. Much of the same reason I did most of the painting and renovations to the house. I'm sure Adam would appreciate no further questions into why he gets off from doing all these "honey do" projects as well =)

So, here is the before shot. Essentially the "fresh out of winter" remains of the yard.

And here is the after!

I still get excited every time I drive up and see how pretty it looks (it goes especially nice with our reworked wood trim that my brother Joel was so awesome to come down and install for us). As I said before, totally worth the soreness and exhaustion I experienced the entire week following. In addition to the front yard, I also planted our container garden for the second year - but that I'll save for another post =)