Weedy

Since March, I've been working to free our flower beds of weeds. It has been, and is, quite a task because of the amount of beds we have in our yard. Not to mention the fact that I am not well versed in plants and weeds. I know dandelions and clovers are weeds, others I am still learning.

Last year, one of the worst weeds we had was a dandelion type weed that was prickly and incredibly difficult to pull up. They were our nemesis. This year, we thought we saw them growing in March, and thought it would be good to get started on them before they got too big and prickly. I spent several hours pulling up these weeds. And there were A LOT of them!

I'll admit that over the last few weeks I've slacked a bit on the weeding. Been too tired when I've gotten home from subbing and done all the other chores I have to do. In that time, the flower beds have been overcome with the weeds (I don't know if I could have kept up even if I'd been working on them daily!). I noticed the other day that some of the weeds I'd been pulling up earlier in the spring had buds on them. Thinking this was weird, I pointed it out to B, who said they were probably still weeds, and they probably weren't flower buds.

Yesterday, M, our friend who is staying with us, pointed out one of the flowers that had been blooming recently. It is a beautiful, colorful flower and looks like this:

He proceeded to point out that all the "weeds" we had been meaning to pull out, and had already pulled out looked exactly the same as this beautiful flower...

Oops.

It seems we were yanking out our Poppy plants. Unfortunately, they look a lot like dandelions and we were horribly mistaken when we thought they were weeds. This mistake only caused us to yank out a hundred or so of these flowers from our flower beds!

Seems we really need to study up on our flowers and weeds before we tear out more beautiful flowers and leave our beds full of weeds...

Getting There...

We are getting there. 5 days! I can't believe that these are my remaining days as a single woman! :) Every Monday from now on, I will be married. Weird. But I am looking forward to it! Eventually, I will introduce you to B. I'm surprised I haven't done it already. :)

We have been hard at work the last few days.

Another before and after shot:

Before

After

I have two gardens left to trim up, and the gardens will be taken care of. I am hoping to finish them tomorrow since I have the day entirely off (no class in the evening). In addition, I have forty more programs and all 115 of the favors to make. But I just have to make the chocolate shapes, put them in the box and add the ribbon. I don't think they will be that bad (I'm hoping). I'm actually pretty impressed with myself. I'm not the most crafty person in the world (although I do try) and I really like the way the programs look. I've done them all myself. I'll post one here eventually if I can.

We did lose a tree yesterday in all the wind from the remnants of Hurricane Ike. It was one of our favorite trees...the whole side just fell off. I can't imagine how bad it must have been for all of those who actually had to go through much worse...a little wind and we had a lot of cleaning up to do, they had a lot more. Really made me count my blessings.

Thanks for all the well wishes. Time is flying by, and I really can't wait!

Gardening

B has been hard at work the last two days (three days more like it). He took Wednesday off work since he didn't get time off last week and he spent the whole day outside in the garden. He's done the same today. I didn't do much outside yesterday, as I was prepping for class and working on programs (and trying to stay relatively clean since I tend to shower at night), but have been outside on and off today. Right now is one of my breaks. I will shortly be making more programs. I go back and forth as each are different kinds of work and I like to mix it up. I've got about 80 programs left to make, and haven't really even started the favors. Nothing like waiting until the last minute, right? :)

Anyway, at least we can finally see our progress. We have about 4 more garden areas left to finish. Then we have to work on the area where the tent is going (which is near the dog kennel...ha...and near our extremely overgrown veggie garden...we haven't had the time to work on it or pick it really...I guess there is always next year. I think if we concentrate on one a day, we will be fine, even if it does rain a few days. B is just that kind of worker.

Anyway, here is a before and after photo of one of the garden areas (and the pictures aren't that great because I took them through a closed window in the house...I can't really say why...)



(For some reason I'm having trouble posting my pictures, but hopefully this looks ok and I'll fix it at a later time...)