Nothing but flowers.

Our yard... well, it needs some work. It looks fine, but just fine. We have a small but great yard, and we love spending time in it (we hardly spent any time outdoors at our old house), so we want it to be as peaceful and pretty as possible. There's a lot we've wanted to do, so knowing we had some busy weekends coming up, Brad and I tried to knock out a few projects these past few weeks. The biggest project has been digging out the majority of what was left over from the previous owner's "garden" (re: mostly weeds). Then Brad laid some, well, mesh something or other, and we had a huge pile of chocolate brown (matches our porch!) mulch delivered on Friday.

Heidi says, "Mmm. Snacks."

In between storms and debilitating heat and senior PGA golf attending --

Does this make us yuppies or nerds?

-- we (by we, I mean Brad) placed mulch all over the backyard, the side yard, and some in front. We also (and by we I mean me) got a lot of flowers planted and trimmed all the never-ending seagrass, deadheaded the hydrangeas, and trimmed the rose bushes (ow).

Heidi and George (mostly Heidi) made themselves at home in the new mulch.

This past week, Hillary and I discovered we have a mutual admiration for a neighborhood house's flower boxes - beautiful mismatched colors and shapes and sizes. This is my attempt - although not nearly as wild and crazy as my inspiration, I think they turned out pretty nice. (I realize our flower boxes are crooked and it drives me crazy. When we moved in, there were four. SOMEONE threw the fourth one out when we weren't looking and now we just have three. So Brad pulled out the extra hooks from the house, but that leaves them all looking a little lopsided.)

Now we can even walk down the path from front to back without being tickled by seagrass or bitten by rogue rose branches.

Cleans up pretty nice!

Oh, and Brad built a poop bucket fence, too!

And now for some extra flower shots, just cause I say so.

I love homegrown flower arrangements.

Oh! And I almost forgot the most traumatic moment of the weekend!! A tick! In my head! When I was driving home from Lowe's on Saturday (flower-getting trip), I reached up and scratched my head and felt something and was like, "what the heck is that giant scab from?!" I dug in, gave a good yank, and pulled a TICK from my head!!! I nearly drove off the road. I flung it (not thinking) then saw it again and was like "ahhh!!!" So I pulled off the road and leaped out of my car and found it and flung it, all the while jumping up and down going "ahhh! gross! ew! eeeeeek!" (Anyone looking out their front windows must have thought I was a crazy person!) I came home and immediately protected my head with a hat (and wore one for our return trip to Lowe's today).

This is what I think of you, tick!

ANYWAY... in a few days I'll be enjoying a different kind of sweltering heat. Four days until the Churches return to New Orleans!