My husband says I can be a tad obsessive.

He may be right. ;)

When I get an idea I tend to run with it ...with all I have... until completion. On Monday I had no thoughts about planting or landscaping ANYthing. It's Friday and here I sit- mission completed, and some. Now I need my husband to make some sweet tea so I can go sit on my porch with a good book. I now find it much more inviting to do so with the new colors and wonderful winged visitors- NOT the biting kind!

We had plants die due to the unusually frigid winter resulting in gaps left in the planting beds. No plants, plenty of dirt. Then the dogs decided they would dig in said dirt. I was not thrilled. Dirt all over my porch (winding up inside) is not my kind of living.

Here are some before and after shots.

These next two shots inverted somehow and I don't care enough to try and change it. LOL. It has been scorching hot and I'm tired folks!

The bushes seen below were azelea's that were as old as the hills and a major chore to dig up. They were not pretty to look at and required far too much trimming. My wonderful husband got busy with the pick axe (the one he chided me for buying a few weeks ago ;) ) I got busy with the shovel and we uprooted the buggers.

Notice the plant at the corner of the house? It WAS an oleander. Like who's idea was it to put a plant with ginormous potential smack next to the house and UNDER the eaves? I'm still scratching my head on that one. You can't really see it, but I now have a lovely hydrangea bush in the oleander's place. It was an easy choice as Hydrangeas are one of my favorite plants and I'm allergic to oleanders. :)

The border at this point is recycled brick found in the yard when we moved in. In the above pic there is still 'monkey grass' to be dug up in front of the brick, but it'll do for now. I'm sure I'll be digging soon as I had to buy several more Mexican Heather plants than I needed. I know right where they need to go...

I survived!! ;)

Ok, actually I did enjoy this last week of assisting my friend, Sharon, in a Kindergarten VBS class. It was certainly tiring but well worth it. Once the chaos of Tuesday passed with increased enrollment and children shifting classes to accommodate the numbers it was smooth sailing.

A blessing is that our mechanic is located right across the street from our church, so 3 of the 5 days of VBS the car was across the street having various things dealt with. The van just rolled past 100,000 miles and we need it to keep running well for at least that many more miles. :) It was a definite blessing that the thumping heard when the car was put into reverse turned out to not be a transmission problem, but rather a broken engine mount. Like how does an engine mount wind up broken on a minivan anyways? I had wondered if it was the result of the accident in which I was rear-ended last September. The impact was enough to require the installation of a new hatch on the rear, so perhaps it affected the mount?? I have no clue. It's not like it's a souped up racing machine- lol. :)

This being Saturday morning after a long week, I have hoped to sleep in a bit, but due to 2 sweet little morning glory's with internal alarm clocks it was not to be so. So I went out and took a few photos instead. Here are a couple favorites of a Cana flower. I find I have to let photos sit on my computer for a time before I revisit them to see how much I ultimately like them, but here are my favorites of the AM based upon first impressions.

I like the idea of taking photo's of people as I certainly have several to choose from, but they largely refuse to indulge me...or stay still. Nature is much more accomodating. :)