We Came, It Rained, We Conquered

Last Friday night I let Olivia pick out some flowers to plant in this front area by our door. It's always been rather "blah" and we've never done anything with it. We were going to plant the flowers for family home evening, so I decided to prep the area (replanting some of the grass, trimming the bushes, and moving the lone elephant ear plant) while the girls were in school. Boy, was I in for a surprise!

Here's what it looked like before I got started.


There's this little area on the other side of my stoop that I was going to move the elephant ear to. I started to dig the hole to transplant it in, and look what I found! Red Oklahoma Mud!


So then I went to dig UP the elephant ear. I figured I had wood chips as mulch on top of soil. What I really had was wood chips about 4 inches deep. Here's the hole where the elephant ears USED to be...



After I had moved the existing plant, it was time to trim down the bushes in the area. Actually, what I had was 2 bushes -one that belonged and this tiny holly bush growing next to it that really seemed out of place. So I trimmed down the first bush (I can't remember what it's called, though Amber told me) and my neighbor Amber offered me the use of her shovel to dig out the holly bush. This was very fortunate for me, because once I started digging, this is what I found...


Apparently this was a holly TREE at one point, and someone just sawed off the top. It came back of course... So I was bound and determined to get that root out. After about 20 minutes or so I am pleased to say that I emerged triumphant! (This in spite of the many counter-attacks launched by that st*p*d root.)


By that time Connor was ready to go in and get some lunch, and it was starting to drizzle. So in we went and then to school to get the girls.

When we got back from school I realized that there was no way Ben would get out in the mud and plant, and since Kelsey was ALREADY covered in mud from a fall in a puddle on the way home from school and Connor had falled asleep in the stroller, it was the perfect time for planting. So we got to work. First transplanting the grass to finish out the border, then planting marigolds, celosia, and petunias. Lovely, in spite of the mud we had covering us from head to toe. Here's our finished result!