Our Saturday Project

Surprise! We aren't dead or anything. Wow, it's been nine months since I wrote a post for this blog. My apologies. So what have we done around the house since then? Well, not much which is why I haven't posted. We started a few projects but didn't finish any of them yet. The reason I'm writing today is that we spent the day freshening up our landscaping and I've got some delectable before and after shots for you, as well as gratuitous chicken glamour shots because you know you want them. Here are the three flower beds we worked on before (Well, kind of before. I did not take photos of the horrible amount of weeds that were in here before I pulled them this morning. Some of them were almost as tall as me. Yikes.)

We went to a local nursery called Harb's Oasis because I had a coupon and because I like that place even though it's a bit of a drive. We came home with a Jeep full of plants.

These lucky guys got to ride up front with me. 

We got Coleus for the two beds around the Crepe Myrtles, and Coleus, Hostas, and Agapanthus for the big bed in front of our dining room window on the side of the house. We also picked up two kinds of basil and two kinds of mint to plant in the planters that sit on our patio railing.

 These are the planters I'm talking about.

 Planting the Basil.

Mint.

Basil.

Of course, while we were on the patio working on the planters/taking pictures, the chickens came over to see what we were doing.

First, we placed the pots where we wanted the plants to go. I couldn't really place the coleus because it came in six packs.

Harley is convinced there are squirrels in this tree whether there are or not.

We've been saving up newspapers and sales ads for a while to use as a weed blocker in the landscaping beds. 

 We didn't put cat litter in the flowerbed. We were just using that container for mulch.

Close up of the newspapery goodness.

Are you ready for the final results? Okay, drumroll please...ta da!

There wasn't quite enough mulch to completely cover the newspapers.

 We didn't do newspaper in the smaller beds because the plants were closer together.

So there you have it. I think that's a pretty good day's work, don't you?

Update: I woke up Sunday with the backs of my thighs just KILLING ME. I realized that spending the day in the garden basically means you are doing squats all day long. Owww.

Change of Plans

So...you know how the last couple of post stated that the hall bathroom was our next project? Well, not so much. I guess I need to back up and explain our backyard plans before I tell you what our actual next project is. Our plans for the backyard include a lot of things that I will probably get into more in a later post. I'll just give a brief outline for now. We want to replace the fence because the existing one is a bit flimsy and already has a few chunks missing. It is also not all the way to the property line so we want to move it in order to gain a bit more yard (even though it will make our yard sort of trapazoid-shaped rather than rectangular.) We also need to find a good way to fully enclose the yard before we get a dog. This will probably happen at the same time as the fence replacement, so that is a big have-to-save-up-for-it project. We also eventually want to furnish our patio and build a porch railing around it. We would like to have a small vegetable and fruit garden and a storage/shop building some day as well.

I didn't think we would really even get into the backyard projects until after we tackled a good bit of the interior, but Alton wanted to go ahead and get the ball rolling on one project in particular. These guys:

Photo from here: http://crunchydomesticgoddess.com/2008/11/22/moving-on-to-the-chicken-crusade/

Yes, we are going to get chickens. We decided that having free, fresh eggs would be nice and after looking into them a bit more we found out that even a small number of chickens can effectively eliminate the bugs and small critters from your yard. (In Louisiana, the mosquitoes are the number two reason not to go outside in the summer. Number one is that it feels like a sauna.) So it seems like a good plan to us. We are going to get another backyard project finished in conjunction with the arrival of the girls, and that is to put a railing around the patio. We don't want them to get up there and leave any "gifts".

We plan to name the girls Scooter, RZR (pronounced Razor), and Rickshaw McGraw. Our cat's name is Vespa so we decided that when we get a dog we will name it Harley to continue the vehicle theme. I wanted the chickens to be included so we named them after various types of vehicles as well. This is the RZR for those who are unfamiliar:

Photo from here: http://www.polarisindustries.com/en-us/ATV-RANGER/2011/RANGER-RZR-Side-By-Side-Vehicles/Pages/Overview.aspx

Alton wants one, apparently. RZR was the name he came up with and was very excited about it, as you can see from the notebook page where we brainstormed for names:

We originally wanted to name them after bicycle brand names to fit our pet name theme, but I liked Rickshaw McGraw too much and then Alton came up with RZR and the rest is history.
So there you have it. Chickens.