I had set the alarm Friday for 2:45 a.m. to be ready for the Royal Wedding and then found out the actual wedding wasn't until 5:00 a.m. - so I reset the clock for 4:30 a.m. but left the tv on. Loud cheering woke me about 4:25 a.m. when William and Harry were in their car on the way to the Abbey which was perfect timing and I was up until after the first (and second) official kiss on the balcony.
Dad got here sometime after 8:00 a.m. and I drug myself back out of bed. He had brought a hibiscus plant and a butterfly bush to plant in the backyard - and we got to talking about maybe getting a couple more hibiscus plants. We found my hoe in the garage to have it handy for Dad to take care of any and all snakes he might find while in either yard and took it to the back yard. I wanted to show Dad the area where the snake lunged at me Sunday and there she was in all her glory, stretched out sunning herself. Dad got the hoe - I ran into the house to double bag a couple of plastic bags and brought them back to Dad - and ran back into the house. I finally looked out and Dad was tying the bags closed - one snake down and it was the BIG snake. I'm like, "it was a pretty big snake wasn't it Dad?" He's looking at me and I finally say, "it really wasn't that big was it, but it was kind of long as far as I was concerned." :)
Off to Home Depot and Lowe's we went to check out hibiscus and we were disappointed in what they had. I said let's head to Earl May just to see what they have thinking their plants would be more expensive. And I had hoped for a yellow hibiscus. Well what was right next to the parking spot I parked in at Earl May but the cart of hibiscus plants that had a yellow plant and they were cheaper than both Home Depot and Lowe's. We bought three plants - check out the pix below.
We planted the hibiscus between the drawf lilac bushes. The lilac bushes did bud but they didn't bloom this year - I'm thinking (along with those I've talked to) that they didn't bloom because this is the first year since they were planted. Next year they should bloom.
Yellow and pink.
This one will be red.
Dad and I are planning on putting garden felt down between all the hibiscus and lilac bushes along with river rock so I won't have to deal with weeds in this area.
This is the hibiscus plant Dad brought up - the little white speck in the dirt in front of the house. We call this plant "The Stick". I paid $9.99 for the Earl May hibiscus plants - Dad said he paid somewhere between $9-$12 for The Stick. The Stick will be a red hibiscus and we laugh and say it will probably be the best plant of all four - we hope :)
This is the butterfly bush Dad brought up - and it will be red too.
We got a wild hair last evening to clean out the mess in this planter in the back yard and made our second trip to Home Depot for plants - and the wind was blowing like you wouldn't believe. This is the front of the planter.
This is a shot from the back of the planter. The blue will be more ground cover and the flowers are daisies. The daisies should be in partial shade - which this isn't - so we'll see how they do.
And Dad wanted to make the Indian burial ground more secure from Butler so now I call it the cattle shoot.
This morning we woke up and drove over to The Well (aka Blue Building) at my church. They were going to be doing some work today so I wanted to show Dad the building and introduce him to the guys that were there working - then back home to attack the enclosed front porch.
Demolition as officially begun. We scraped all walls but one - we moved things by one wall and we couldn't get to it to scrape and we got all the icky tile up off the windowsills! I also threw away several things that had been on the porch for quite a while - there are still a few things that need to be tossed. I told Dad I would bring the shop vac up from the basement tomorrow and maybe clean up the paint flakes by the front door and vacuum the porch better Monday or Tuesday. I realized today I'm not too thrilled to scrape paint - oh well.
As I took a trash bag of broken up tile and paint flakes to the trash bin I cleaned out the large planter that is on the landing on the steps going to the front porch. As Dad and I were eating lunch we talked about getting one more plant and we needed to run to WalMart so we looked at the plants there - nothing I liked that would be in partial shade. So guess where we went - you only get one guess. Home Depot for the THIRD time in two days. See the picture below to what we planted.
After planting these Dad rested for a little bit and then loaded up the car and headed back to Pella and I headed upstairs to crash. It was a little warm upstairs so Butler got to wear his Cooling Bandana for the first time and I think it really helped him stay cool - thanks Nicki and Olav for getting this for him. Nicki and Olav are my cousin's dogs :)
I've been looking forward all week for Saturday night racing and Channel 17/Fox is having issues with DirecTV. I'm watching a blue screen with "no need to call us" on it - so I'm listening to the race on the radio. That's ok - but they have been having lots of wrecks and some sound fairly big - wish I could have seen them. Oh well....
