THINK GREEN!

Well, it's St. Patrick's Day and since we didn't have any St. Patrick's Day plans my goal was to finish the garden work!  Whew, I am sooo exhausted, sun burned, tired and sore....and still not done yet!  We started early this morning by going to buy some new top soil and mulch to give the gardens a fresh look!

Good thing we have a much bigger car now!  Last year we had to make about 15 trips...literally!!

3 hours later we had purchased 210 annuals (WOW), 8 bags of midnight black mulch, 1 bag of potting soil and 3 bags of topsoil!  All for about $100 using all my coupons at Lowe's and Calloway's Nursery!  Not bad! :)

FYI- Join Calloway's Garden Club to get an immediate savings of $10-$20 and great savings throughout the year!

Below is one of the coupons I used today!  

Click HERE to print your own coupons from their website!

We also took advantage of this great special they are currently offering.

We were all loaded up and ready to head back home!

By the time we got home, I had already identified my first mistake....next time I will go shopping and buy everything the night before I plan to plant it all.  By the time we got home it was close to noon, it was getting HOT and I was already getting tired and hungry, but I kept on going because I was determined to finish this project today!!

After Kevin unloaded all the bags he had to call it quits because his Spring Allergies were taking over.  So I was on my own to finish everything.

I don't have any before or during pictures of the process because it was hot and awful and I wasn't even thinking about taking pictures.  But, here are some pictures when it was almost done!  All the weeds are gone, fresh soil, fresh mulch and fresh flowers!  YAY!  

Here is a picture just before the flowers went in.

Then I added the flowers!  They are SO tiny, but they will grow bigger!

This is one of my favorite parts of the front garden!

In the backyard I added some color to the patio using these big pots with some of my MOST FAVORITE flowers!  I wish I could plant these in the front too, but I learned last year that they do not last in the hot afternoon sun we get in the front yard.

 

Bindi takes some time to stop and smell the flowers! :)

It may seem like I am all done, but I am not.  The side garden in the front yard was swarming with ants so I have to kill those and then finish it and then one of the gardens in the back had grubs in it! YUCK!   I was so grossed out!  

Here are the picture of the backyard garden area from LAST year.

Hopefully I can get these finished ASAP!

Now all I have to wait for is for the grass to turn green!  It is still yellow from the winter!  I love the way it looked last year...before all the zinnia's got scorched from the HOT Texas heat and sun!

Here is was...

And JUST FOR FUN, below is what it looked like when we moved in!!  WOW, that was a lot of work to change all that!  I am SO GLAD we didn't have to do all that again this year!  It looked awful!

That's all for today!  I am so tired!  Hopefully I can finish the rest tomorrow once I battle the grubs and the ants!  Wish me luck!