Not quite a month...

since my last post but darn close. These past couple of weeks have been extremely tough and tiring for our little family. Two days after my last post a huge outbreak of tornados swept across our region. It was exhausting going in and out of the bathtub (our safe place) with the animals to checking the radar on tv, and then checking the live streams of the tv stations where we have family and friends. A tornado touched down about a mile from my grandmother's house and where my sister works in Meridian, then the huge one that tracked across North Alabama was about a mile away from our old house there. That night and the next day was spent trying to get ahold of folks to make sure they were okay and to see if we could help them out. Then we find out a family member is sick and it may be serious but we don't know yet. The next day Ben gets a phone call saying he didn't get the promotion he was trying for. I can't even remember the other little bad things that kept happening, but it has seriously been one crappy thing after another. I had joked if only April would get over with maybe things would look up, but May has been just as tough on us. Turns out that family member is seriously ill, and will have to start extreme treaments. And I just found out yesterday a friend of the family had passed away.

I know the Lord only gives us what we can handle, but I really could use a break! It's tough work trying to keep positive and not cry when everyone around you is so sad about what's happening. Thankfully we've had a lot of company lately. My parents and sister just left after visiting for the weekend, and some of my friends from Huntsville have been up to visit a couple of times. Once, just to get away from not having electricity and having a city-wide curfew!

House-wise not much has happened, I've mostly been working outside: I bricked out and mulched the rest of our front yard, cleaned the gutters, set up our vegetable garden, and cleaned up our window boxes.



The other half of our front yard's flower beds.





Our veggie garden! Soon we'll have tomatoes, yellow tommy toes, cucumbers (for pickling), black eyed peas, butter beans, and sweet potato leaves (and I guess sweet potatoes if someone else wants them).

 


The forests of maple saplings that were growing in our gutters. Ben said he felt like he was destroying whole civilzations pulling them out.




Petunias in the window boxes. Might build real window boxes one day...




Even Foster's been busy, just look at those holes he dug! Don't know if he wants me to plant something there, or he thought I didn't have enough to do and wants me to fill them. What a sweet dog...haha.



Hello, Sun!

Today was b-e-a-utiful! And you can bet your sweet bippy I took advantage of it. Let's see...

I pruned a few shrubs, including two very neglected forsythias.


Before



After

I know it doesn't look that great, but you'll just have to trust me on this. It had to be done! These two shrubs were beginning to get big enough they were touching the house, growing even more shrubs, and half of them were dead. I was really afraid to prune these guys since I've never really pruned anything except for a couple of box shrubs at my parent's old house. I had to take out any branches that were 3/4" or thicker, anything touching the ground, anything dead, and anything that was really criss-crossed. (And, boy, do these suckers get tangled!)

I also fertilized the front yard, but Ben tells me that the "grass" that I like in the yard isn't grass at all. He said the nice looking stuff is actually the weeds and that really scratchy stuff is the real grass. Herumph! If that's really what crabgrass is, how strange is it that I would prefer a yard full of it? I hope he's not right and it's just two types of grass in our yard.

And the thing I'm most excited about, I got some edging stones for the flower bed! Now that I'm thinking about it, there's no flowers in it, so should it be a shrub bed? Anyhoo, the edging really makes a difference, see?

Before. This is only half of it, forgot to take a picture of all of it before...oops.



After!

Ahhh, such definition! I wasn't such if I should get these or the red, since we'll probably paint the house one day. I'm hoping that either they'll go with whatever colors we choose, or if they don't we can stain them if we have to. But for now I'm loving them! Now the flower bed just needs some work and maybe even some flowers.