My little corner

When we first moved into the house, I saw this little corner of the backyard as an herb garden.


Upon further inspection I noticed that the only thing growing here was moss... mainly because this little corner is pretty much in shade all the time. Not a good spot for an herb garden.

So, after thinking and a bit of research and talking to my MIL, I decided to do a container shade garden in this area. I had looked into getting some stepping stones/pavers from the local garden store, but upon further thought, decided I didn't want to spend the money on them... especially when I have the perfect source for large rocks! I made a quick trip up to Fayetteville on Saturday, and got all the large flat rocks that I wanted! Getting the plants/soil/planters was part of my Mother's Day gift, and I had been waiting to get them until I got the rocks. Josh had a soccer game on Saturday, and after that I had fun shopping!

It was pretty late when I got home on Saturday night, but I got the stone in place before it got too dark to see.


I finally got some plants in the pots today. I'm not quite done, but I love what I have so far.


I hope to have get a few more plants, and some small pea gravel down soon. Maybe a few decorative elements, too. I thought about putting some sort of water feature here, too, but I don't want to pay the price for the one I like, and the cheaper ones are not even close to being what I want. I could always build my own, but that will have to wait until after school is out. For now, I am enjoying seeing the color back there, and knowing that I did it! :)

I am feeling...

Emotional
And a bit hormonal (which isn't helping matters)
Button-bustin' pride
Stress
Gratitude
Love
Happiness
Sadness
Like a failure
Raw
Regrets

I'm not sure how I'm going to handle Thursday. My oldest child will be graduating high school. I've been weepy for days now, and while I am filled with pride in her accomplishments, I can't help but also feel like I have not done enough. Eighteen years cannot have gone by already. I'm not ready for her to be an adult.

I wish I had learned how to take a breath and enjoy every single minute; not worried so much about the small stuff. I wish I had learned to control my temper a bit more when I am stressed out, and not take it out on my children. I wish I had taken more time to play with them when they were little. I wish I had learned to savor each messy hand-print, because their hand will never be that little again.

I hope that I have taught them how to be strong, independent individuals. I hope that I have taught them how to have faith, and see the good in this world. I hope that I have taught them how to laugh at themselves, and enjoy life. I hope I have taught them how to be kind, and show respect for their fellow man.

This parenting stuff is hard... it's physically hard when they are little, and emotionally challenging when they get older. When they are little you can't wait to for them to get a little bigger, and when they are bigger, you wish that they could go back to being small. This is the hardest thing I've done in my life, but it's the most rewarding, as well.

I think I had better go buy some water-proof mascara. I don't see these tears stopping any time soon.

While I am waiting...

The AC guy is here fixing my air... YAY!! While I am waiting for him to finish, I thought I'd post a few pictures

This is what is going on in my front flower bed right now...


These beauties are just blooming. LOVE them!


My very last snapdragon bloom.


Kayti picked these out... they are lemon zest petunias. I just love their delicate color.

Megan is still working on the mailbox bed project. I'm excited to see what she will come up with.

Thanks for all my well-wishes. I am feeling much better today, but still have a slight cough. Barry has had it for 2 weeks now, so I am not holding out much hope of mine going away in the next day or two. Hopefully soon, though.

Enjoy your beautiful spring day... even though it will be slightly on the warm side!

randomness

I'm up in the middle of the night with a very upset tummy. I'm not sure that I would have still been asleep, but I'm blaming the fact that I am wide awake on the stupid phone call that hubby got from work at 2:30 this morning. I haven't been able to get back to sleep since then, so yes... I am going to say it is all the phone call's fault. And just because I can, I'm also blaming the phone call for my upset stomach.

I took a sick day yesterday. I've been fighting a cold, and it has moved into my chest. I spent Sunday night/Monday morning coughing and not sleeping, so I indulged myself a bit and stayed home. Can't do that again today. :(

Our AC is not working. YUCK!!! This weekend is the first time that we have turned it on, and instead of the house getting cooler, it is just getting hotter and hotter. A service call has been placed. Hoping for some good news today.

On a cheery note... my garden is doing well! It's so fun to look out my bedroom window and see lots of green things growing! I planted beans a week ago... from seed. On Saturday I had one little bitty sprout sticking up out of the soil. Yesterday I had 4 big shoots - all about 2 1/2 inches tall. SO FUN!

I love flowers. I love planting flowers. I love adding much needed color to the front of my house. Megan is working on a flower bed project for me. I want to add some flowers around the mailbox, and she is mapping it out for me. I'm glad she loves flowers, too.

My bench is mostly finished... it's all painted and waiting on me to get a coat of sealer on it. I moved it into the house while it waits, so I can see it's prettiness! Now on the nightstands, and maybe I'll actually get my headboard and footboard home one of these days. Since the warm weather hit, Dad has been busy with things on the farm, and my HB and FB have not quite got finished.

My daughter has 9 more days of high school left. She will be a full time college student in a month. She was offered money to go to school this summer, so how could she refuse? Well, she could have easily, but her father and I would not let her. She will be going to Calhoun for a while, and then would really like to transfer to BYU-I. I'm still not ready for her to move that far away, but I understand her feelings of wanting to get out of the house. She is ready to spread her wings. I'm not so much ready for it!

Josh has been asked to play on an AYSO select team this month. His uncles are coaching... should be fun!

May is going to be a very busy month. It will make the month go faster, which is a good and bad thing. Good because once the month is over, I am off of work for 2 months. Bad because... see above. I'm still having issues with my daughter's determination to grow up!

Did anyone see this post on my SIL's blog? Kayti and I LOVE P &P, so I just had to check out N & S... LOVED it! Kayti still has not watched it. She is snowed under with homework and studying for her upcoming AP exam. I'm sure she will love it as much as I did when she finally gets to watch it.

Well, since it is almost time for me to get up, I think I'll go lay back down and rest for a while!

I have a garden!

Isn't it funny how time changes things? I remember growing up that we planted a garden every year. I HATED planting and working in that garden! I would rather be doing something fun, like swimming, reading, watching tv... pretty much anything else in the world was more fun to me than working in that garden. Now that we have a yard to "play" in, what is the first thing that I want to do? Plant a garden!

Our backyard is not the most condusive to gardening, though... it's pretty much pure Alabama red clay. Nothing is really growing back there, so what's a girl to do? Build herself some raised beds, of course! I enlisted the help of my dad (he bought the 1x12's for me... they are so much cheaper in Fayetteville), my husband (gave him a reason to buy himself a circular saw), my in-laws (my FIL just built some boxes for my MIL, and I borrowed some ideas from them) and my daughters (they are using it as a personal progress project). I came up with the design I wanted, then Barry and I hashed out some details. I waited patiently for the last frost date to pass, and finally built my boxes this weekend. We built 2 boxes... both 2'x4'. We built them out of 1x12 boards, with wire mesh on the bottom, 2x4's for support on the bottom, then 2x4's for the legs. We covered the inside of the boxes with plastic, cutting holes in the bottom for drainage. They stand tall enough that the planting surface is about waist high, so it shouldn't kill my back to work in my garden! So excited by this!


I started seeds in the house, and couldn't wait to get them put in the soil. So far I have planted herbs - basil, rosemary and oregano; strawberries; peas; carrots; radishes; onions; lettuce. I still need to plant some roma tomatoes (have to find some of these, first... no one seems to have any), dill, thyme, squash, jalapeno peppers, red bell pepper and green beans. Yummm... I can taste them already!

Weekend Getaway

My poor hubby has been working some insane hours lately. It seems that if he wasn't at work, then he was working from home. Even when he has not been on-call, he is still the one that gets called and ends up having so fix some problem. So, I decided that he needed a break. I knew that he would never really agree to my plan, so I went behind his back and made plans without him! I even roped his boss into my scheme, and it worked like a charm! I surprised him after work on Friday and whisked him away to Nashville for the weekend. It's been a while since just the two of us did anything like this, and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves! I even took his phones away from him so no one would be able to reach him!

Our first stop was to...


The Cheesecake Factory!! It's probably a really good thing that the closest one to us is 2 hours away. I LOVE that place. We both enjoyed a yummy dinner, and got cheesecake to go. I thought I had died and gone to heaven when I saw this red velvet cheesecake... it was so incredible!

I learned an important lesson over the weekend when it comes to booking hotels... stick with what you know. I went out on a limb and booked a room for us in a hotel I was not familiar with. Turned out to be a VERY bad choice, and we only stayed there one of the two nights we were there. I won't go into details, but let's just say that the Ramada Inn at the Stadium/Downtown is by far the biggest rip-off, and worst hotel on the planet.

Barry and I lived in Nashville for about 2 1/2 years, so we spent part of the day on Saturday visiting old "stomping-grounds". It was pretty sad! Our old apartment building had been torn down, the mall where we loved to go hang-out has all but closed (probably less than half the stores were opened), and the whole neighborhood was run down. On the upside, one of the malls in a different part of town that had been struggling to stay afloat has now taken-off, and it is beautiful.

We also visited a couple of parks... Bicentennial Park and Centennial Park. Bicentennial Park and Mall was built to commemorate the Bicentennial of Tennessee Statehood. It was built after we left Nashville, so this was the first time we had ever been there. It was beautiful and so peaceful. There is also a World War 2 Memorial in the park, and they have coolest "globe" there. It is marble, and "floats" on a water base. You can move it around and spin it... so cool! The globe also shows the distance between Tennessee and different places in the war where Tennessee soldiers served.


Centennial Park is the home of the Parthenon... a full scale replica of the original in Athens, Greece. It was built in the 1860's as part of the state's centennial celebration. While Barry and I lived there we were never able to actually visit the Parthenon because it was under renovations, although we have both been there as kids. It was fun to see it all finished this time and go back inside.


After we found a new hotel on Saturday afternoon, we rested up a bit, then we headed back to downtown for a NHL Predators Hockey game. It was their last regular game of the season, and I was able to get tickets for us. We are not huge hockey fans, but I thought it would be something fun and new for us to do. The Preds won in a shoot-out after a tied game and one period of overtime. It was fun being there, but truthfully I think I did more people-watching than hockey-watching! :)

The AT&T building in downtown was built while we lived in Nashville. It's nick-named the "Batman Building" and is a fun addition to the Nashville sky-line.


Tennessee is my home state. It's where I was born, and where generations of my ancestors have lived. I have officially lived more of my life outside of the state now, but I still consider it home. It was nice to "go home" this past weekend and relax. We missed the kids and founds some new fun things to do with them, but it was fun to get away and enjoy time together.

Ahhh... Spring!!

Barry and I enjoyed a beautiful weekend in Nashville (more to come on that later). We visited several parks while we were there, and the dogwood was just beautiful. The thoughts of spring make me so happy. I am a warm weather girl, and LOVE this time of year.