By Golly, I Still Like Him!!

With Andrew being on an Educational leave of absence from work, we have had the best time together. It's amazing that after being together almost eight years, that I still like him as a person.

Yeah, I love him and all that, but it is good to be reminded that if I randomly met Andrew on the street, I would still want to get to know him and make him my friend. This might sound weird to some people, but you have to realize that we don't get much time to hang out and be together. If you are married, please don't take for granted having your husband home every night and being able to spend time together on a regular basis. With Andrew and I working opposite schedules, him going to school full time, and I have classes on his 2 nights off we really don't get to have that much quality time together.

Here is what we have done:

Here is our Magnolia tree that sits in the very center of our front yard. I love trees, and I like this one, but it kills any grass or life around it.

We (Andrew) built a retaining wall around our tree and planted hosta and those pretty plants (I can't remember their names) around our tree. There will hopefully be a picture of it later. We filled in the wall with top soil and it looks so good!! The wall and the plants cover up some of the bare areas in our yard, and we also bought grass seed that should grow in shade areas.

Here is our work of art!! The left side of the front of our house has holly bushes. I hate holly bushes, especially these. They are bare in the middle of the bushes and they have sharp leaves. The right side of our house had nothing but clover. We killed the grass and clover, put the weed smotherer material over it, planted our flowers, and then mulched it. And oh yes, that is an edger and a curve you see. They are going to put me on curb appeal. My mom was so proud of us that she has been showing everyone the pictures I sent her. In our new flower beds, we planted Knock-Out Roses, Day Lilies, Azalea bush, something I can't remember at this time, petunias, and we transplanted a rose bush that was at the side of the house to the front. I also have hanging plants on the front of the house too.

We also got a new mailbox and created a flowerbed with petunias and day lilies around it too. I planted zinnias in our flower bed beside the house. I am really excited about the zinnias. They are the only ones that I planted from seeds so hopefully we will see them growing before long.

I met one of our neighbors while we were working on our yard. She told me that she has lived on that street for 32 years and no one had ever tried to make our front yard look good. That meant a lot to me that she noticed right away the work we were doing. The front of our house really does look a lot different now. Hopefully we won't kill anything to quickly, but I do have a plant that i have had since before Andrew and I got married and it is still living. Hopefully that is a testament to my gardening skills!.