We want...a shrubbery! [A dramatic chord]

What movie??

Kay, so yesterday was "warm" - meaning in the low fifties - so my sweet Mom and I went to my soon-to-be house (No, it STILL hasn't closed.  We sign the papers at the title company today, but we don't "take ownership" until Tuesday.  I have no idea why.) and planned to plant my six shrubs.

Um, we only ended up planting one.

First of all, there was this black gardening paper stuff tacked down everywhere:

 The paper was tacked down with these huge rusty thingeys:

The paper had been down so long that there was a new layer of dirt on top of it, and a teeny bit of bark, and grass and weeds that had grown on top of it.  I'm anti gardening paper stuff anyways - I want to be able to get to my weeds and plants and stuff - so we pulled it up.

We've been trying to figure out what we already have in the garden.  I'm pretty sure these are peonies:

I can tell because the remaining leaves have been munched on, and I can also tell because of the leftover tops after the blooms have died.  So I get to battle leaf-munching insects over in this house, too.

It's a good thing we pulled the paper up, because we had noooo idea there was a dripline in the garden:

We saw this major-looking pipe attached to them, but we still have only found three or so sprinkler heads on the lawn. And the heads are all close to the gardening edges.  Could it be that there is just a sprinkler system around the gardening areas, but not on the lawn???  We just can't figure it out.

We planted this nine bark bush - the biggest one - where there is a corner and no window.  Nine barks can get pretty tall, and we don't want to cover the view from the windows:

It took FORRRRREEEEEVER.  (What movie?)  There were soooooooooo many rocks.  I mean, it was like rock layer above rock layer above rock layer.  And the root ball on the nine bark was kind of wide, so we had to dig deep and wide.  I felt like one of those dudes in that book, Holes.  I love that book. I love that movie.  Shia LaBeouf, my favorite, is in it.  With a fro.

I found these crazy bushes all over the place:

They seem kind of viney, yet woody, and they stay low on the ground.  From what I can tell, one bush spawned two or three others nearby.  I trimmed them back, and since they are low-growers, I'm transplanting one of them underneath a window to provide some symmetry in the garden.

I met two more neighbor ladies.  The across-the-street neighbor seems very shy.  The next-door-neighbor, mother to The Other 8-year-old Sadie, is actually a girl I went to high school with!!  Small world!  She's really nice, and it will be great to have her as a neighbor.  And the lady on the other side of us brought out some toy cars for Micah and Gage to play with, since they were being...themselves.  (Difficult.)

I go over again this afternoon, this time to scrape paint chips, sand them, and paint those areas in the same color that's already on the siding.  Um, even though the house isn't officially mine yet.  I feel like a trespasser.  Don't tell anyone, okay?  Ben and I really want to completely change the color of the house, but with winter coming on, and freezing temperatures at night, we are just out of time.  My dad was really interested in fixing the peeling areas, and some guy at Home Depot has a kind of paint that you can paint and will stay, even if the temps drop to freezing.  So I guess that's what we're doing until we can do something major down the road.

Can I tell you how excited I am to have such a neat breezeway and front porch?  It reminds me a lot of the houses of my friends in San Diego.  My mom and I are going to a local nursery to attend a seminar on how to make your porch pots holidayish tomorrow morning.  It should be fun.  For when I actually own a porch pot, or several.

Well, off I go to tend to two kids who I think are playing sick to stay home from school.  Little stinkers.  They're really good actors.  And the Oscar for Best Actor goes to...Dylan!!  Best Supporting Actor goes to....Micah!! 

Dylan:  Wow, I'm so honored.  It took so much work to fool my mom, but I really tried to make my breathing seem labored and did a lot of frowning and a bit of fake crying.  I'm here to say that dreams do come true.  Thank you!!

Micah:  I decided to go a different route today and pretend to have nausea.  I lay still on the couch for a good hour this morning to show Mom how truly sick I was.  But now I'm jumping on the couch and drawing.  I'm excited to hoard this trophy away under my bed!  Thank you!!