How I spent my weekend

Let me preface this blog entry by saying that Mr. Kay and I are plant-stupid. We have absolutely minimal experience when it comes to landscaping and growing plants. We have lived in our house for almost ten years, but have never done anything with the yard, other than throwing down some grass seed and hoping for the best. Most years, I will buy some colorful annuals and plant them in a large pot on our front porch. They usually last until the end of June when I get tired of watering them, it stops raining and the Kansas July sun burns them to a crisp.

Over the last year and a half, we have painted and re-roofed our house. It looks wonderful, now, so we felt inspired to add a teeny bit of landscaping. We ventured out on Saturday evening to a nearby nursery and after wondering around looking at the variety of plans and listening to a young man speak plant Greek to us, we finally chose a few victims, I mean plants, and brought them home.

After church on Sunday, we went to our big box store and bought some plastic edging, weed paper, plant food and potting soil. Then we came home and set to work. And when I say work, I mean the kind of back breaking work where you sweat profusely, even though it's not an extremely hot day. I'll be honest. I am not an outdoors kind of girl. I prefer air conditioning and shade. But I hung in there, and I'm pretty proud of what we accomplished. After we started turning over the dirt, we did get a little worried and "invited" my parents to come give us a hand. I'm glad we did. It made us a bit more confident to have the voice of experience helping us out. And, we learned a few things.

So, what did we plant? I'm not really sure. There are a couple of forsythia bushes, two dogwood bushes, some spirea, a couple lillies, some hostas and some pretty little ground cover plants with blue and purple flowers. The real question is what will survive? My mom wondered if we were planting things a bit too closely together. I assured her that it was fine, because we are counting on about half of them dying. I'm just being realistic, here.

Being a total klutz, there was no way that I could escape this adventure without an injury. I have a lovely scraped bruise on the back of my right calf. As I was putting my foot on the top of my spade to force it into the ground, I slipped and scraped the back of my leg against the top of the spade. Thank goodness I was wearing jeans, but boy did it hurt. It got worse in the evening, and I can still feel it everytime I step down on that leg. I was surprised at how black and blue it isn't. As much as it hurts, it seems like it should be more colorful. I suspect the bruise goes pretty deep. I really should not be allowed to use tools. I'm a danger to myself.

I'm sure the folks in our small town and wondering what is up with us! First paint, then a new roof and now landscaping? It's about time! We'll see how long it lasts!