Signs of Spring

Spring is HERE!

(ok...so I know it's been here for almost 2 months, but I'm late in posting this as usual)

This is the tree that we planted in our backyard last year and then proceeded to over water it (due to the clay soil) causing root rot which made the 5 pink blossoms shrivel and die while the countless other buds never even opened. We thought we had killed this tree for sure, but as you can see it is pretty resistant and was in full bloom right before we took our trip to Hawaii (I promise that post is coming soon). I was so thankful that we got to enjoy the pretty pink blossoms for about a week; and, I enjoyed doing dishes a lot more since I could see it from my kitchen window.

The weekend before we left, Mikie and I planted flowers in our front yard. Last year, he chose all pink petunias. This year, he wanted a rainbow of colors....literally! Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, and pink were his exact requests from the moment I mentioned the plan for planting flowers.

Mikie sporting his new gardening gloves from Lowes: Diego with elephants!

When he unloaded them from the car, he insisted they get lined up around the tree on the stones (Amber, sorry to bring back painful "landscaping/birthday party" memories). I was quick to tell him they weren't staying there or going in the ground in that arrangement. If I have to have a rainbow in my front yard, you bet I'm going to have it in the correct order!

Getting started: Red first around the base of the tree

To conserve space, we decided to make the next row a mixture of orange and yellow marigolds

Since we couldn't find any green flowers, we convinced him that the leaves on the plants were the "green" in our rainbow. In hindsight, I wish we would have just gotten a bright green plant for filler.

A ring of blue, then purple, and finally the last pretty pink petunias to complete the ROY G BIV... well... ROY G BPP in our case.

Time to water them!

Gardening makes you thirsty!

(of course, you can't get out a hose and stay dry...they were both tearing off their clothes and running through the sprinkler in their underware & diaper)

The finished rainbow!

When we returned from Hawaii 2 weeks later, the rainbow now looks like this:

I'm not sure why all the marigolds look yellow in this picture. I can assure you we do have orange in this collaboration....and you know, I didn't think I would enjoy the eclectic collection... but I do. I really do! Thank you, Mikie!