Another Tree!

I'm trying to finish the kitchen!  Really I am!  My whole day was sucked up by a visit to the pedi with the little blt's.  So not much has been going on around our humble abode.

We did plant a tree in the backyard.

  It's actually very sad, there is nada going on back there...there was this awful fountain turned cess-pool that we took out.  

I actually wanted to rent a jack-hammer and diy it, until the guys, we paid a bucket of money, started on it--phew was it crazy hard work.  There was a ton of random cement poured all around the back yard and side that we took out for safety (wild kiddos+cement edges=bad idea).

Then, we just had the barren wasteland.

Our neighborhood used to be a citrus grove and ranch, so everyone is required to plant citrus.  I love citrus trees, tasty grapefruit and orange juice.  Lots of lemonade making with the stuff life gives ya :)

I find the cross-pollinated types exciting--enter in the tangelo tree!

We bought Tammy at--shocker--Lowe's (did you know they guarantee their plant for a year!--groovy for my aphid thumb), and put her in the ground quickly.

Of course we had help from our little planter!

Tammy went in much easier that our first tree planting adventure with Ashley!

Here she is all planted and ready to grow:

And here is the wide shot of the back yard...

Just keepin' it real here folks! :)

And one parting thought!  Gooooooo Suns!

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Landscaping part deux

This part will probably not be any more informative than the last.  I do have one groovy link for ya...

I am all about xeriscape!  Low water usage (keep that desert alive!), predominantly native to the area etc... Here is an awesome search engine where you can search by type of plant, water usage, flower color, evergreen, etc.  Note: end real info here

 Cactus isn't allowed in our neighborhood, except as an 'accent'-um hello, this giant 100 year old saguaro is my accent.  Anywho, I had all sorts of ideas about what to buy and make our yard a thing to be admired by all--haaaaa.  Then, we had a run-in with a cactus, literally.  The little blt's weren't interested in reading every.single.tag. on the plants at Lowes...so we just bought plants on clearance!  Hello half off, I lurve you! They are primarily xeriscape too.  Here is our planting adventure in pictures...

All the usual suspects...

 

One was very serious about developing her plant-handling skills

While the other was only interested in water 'handling'

until it handled her

when her sister dumped a bucket of water on her head!

water was the name of the game.  water+dirt=crazeee fun 

This time I let the hubs do most of the digging (hello hard work) while I obsessed over rearranging the river rock in our front yard--OCD, much?!  And there is definitely noooo cactus.  Happy week to you and yours!

s:)

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Landscapin'

I have a lot to say about landscaping, mostly not informative, but a lot nonetheless...

First, we started off by heading to our favorite home improvement store (read: coupon in hand) Lowe's on Friday evening.  We needed more trees and such to beautify our barren yard.  The youngest BLT's were along for the shopping adventure.  Of course, the 3 yr old has no interest in staying in the cart and therefore neither does her little, very active sister.  Something came over me and I thought, heck I'll let them each out to look at the pretty flowers.  Of course, one was interested in the trees and the other wanted to check out the flowers.  The outdoor area there is big!  Many aisles to run down and possible packs of flowers to grab.  Did I mention that the trees are kept in these little bins with a rope across them to keep them together?  Well on a breezy day like Friday, those trees get to movin' and swayin' and a fallin'!  While I'm trying to make sure the trees are standing up and off of the three year old Emster, my other eyeball is straining to peripherally watch the wild child LB...

Suddenly, the hubs ran inside for a minute (can you say bad time for a full bladder?!)

Think Shelly think....

Hey girls, let's go pick out a thing of flowers for each of you to plant?

Yippee, if for a moment we're all on the same page--notice the for a moment part...

Each of the ladies chooses a thing of flowers then another, different thing of flowers.  LB suddenly throws (yes there was dirt all over the ground) her pot on the ground and runs around to the other side of the aisle.  Before I can catch up with her, she grabs a 

CACTUS! A Cactus kinda like this!

with itty bitty spines!

My little bean had like 300 little spines all over her hands!  Oi vey!

I scoop them both up and run to the ladies room, with the non-cacti-covered one, screaming-I don't have to go potty!  Yup no one is looking at us at this point...

We ended up going home to try to get the cactus spines out. 

 That was a stress-free car ride...

I attacked each hand with tape to hopefully pull them all out and wrapped the other hand with tape-in-waiting.

 Half a tape roll and a good bath soak later...I **think** I got them all out. 

The worst of it all?  When she cried the loudest and hardest?

When her hand was taped and she couldn't move it of course!  The spines didn't even bother her!  She's a wild, infectious, lovely, adorable child :)

coming up next, the stuff we actually planted...

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Digging for treasure!

Do you remember how I told you the HOA where I live was on us about our landscaping?  Well we decided to git 'er dun!
 I am really interested in doing xeriscape style and I'm usually all over doing lots of web research, but we threw all caution to the wind at Lowe's! We bought this tree!

check out that groovy price tag-$29.98!

I had priced trees a few years ago at a local nursery and boy-howdy were they pricey!  I understand that this is because they come out and plant them for you!  Well, heck I am all about DIY, so I thought we could dig our own hole and plant our own tree...

At first I let the men-folk do the work.

They are much neater than I, they cleared away the rocks and such...

We have some crazy hard dirt here in AZ, it was taking forevah!

Then someone had the crazy ingenious idea to water the dirt to soften it up

Then I got in on the act!  Digging is some hard work I tell ya!

Water=lots of mud and only a wee bit easier digging...

I think the hubs and I dug for two hours--darn guidelines about the hole being 2 1/2 times the size of the pot and as deep as the whole rootball!  Sheesh!

Finally we were ready to put her in

We used this stuff to welcome her to her new home

Please welcome our newest addition...dun, dun duuuuunnnn,

Ashley!

Why, yes we named our tree!  Don't your's have names?

She seems to be adjusting nicely and is enjoying her little rock circle.

Aren't her leaves lovely!

She's going to be very big and give beautiful shade!

Oh and here is all the treasure we dug up!

It's hard to tell but there's silicone, cement-with rebar, roof tiles, piping and various random 'construction' items there!

s:)

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