In other news...
As I said I would talk about the hubs last time I wrote a post, here's what's been going on in the land of Justin lately:
- He went to a work conference in San Diego and got to do/see some pretty cool stuff, including seeing the Eucalyptus trees at UC San Diego that inspired Dr. Seuss' The Lorax (super cool!!), and going to a Speakeasy which you had to go through a hidden door to get into (also super cool!!).
- While at said conference, Justin gave a presentation with his co-workers, which I'm sure he doesn't think is a big deal at all, but I think it is, so yay J!!
- Yesterday morning Justin took his comps (comprehensive exams) for the HESA Master's program. That's such a big hump to get past, so the stress of looming exams is no longer over his head. Now if he could just know how he did... (there's always something right?)
- Justin got a new phone through work (hello iPhone 6S!) which signals the beginning of us FINALLY getting our own phone plan. I know...we're such millennials... And bonus, his phone has a much better camera on it than my lousy iPhone 4 (yes...that's what I'm still using right now) so the pictures for my store are going to get a face lift (see story cover photo and logo for examples).
- Justin is playing on an adult-league flag football team through the city with some friends from work. The boys and I haven't been able to go to a game yet, but I'm sure Justin's a stud out there. That being said, his first game was played without cleats, so he came home all bloody from sliding all over the field (not exaggerating), and during the second game, my dad's old cleats (which he was wearing), decided to come apart mid-game. Let me rephrase, the bottom came off one of the cleats, but not the other, so he had to hobble around in one cleat and one slipper (as he called it). Hahahaha! We'll get him some proper cleats before his next game.
- Justin got a 12-week pass for Crossfit through work (hello!), so he's going to be starting that this weekend. Sounds like voluntary time in a torture chamber to me, but to each his own I guess.
Also, over the past few weeks, Justin and I have completely redone the landscaping in our front yard. This was REALLY hard work...like harder than I thought it would be. We had to dig up a bunch of bushes, remove the old edging stones, plant new plants, haul in fresh top soil and mulch, and create a new edge using rocks from the side of our yard. (side note...the previous owner of our house, for reasons unknown, decided to lay rocks over a large portion of the side of our yard. My guess was that the grass wasn't growing well so they put down rocks to cover the lack of grass, but now weeds and some grass are growing there, but we can't mow it, so there's this weird rock/weed part of our yard. We gathered a lot of these rocks for the border to our new flower beds and hardly made a dent in the number of rocks over there, but hey, free rocks!)
Here are some before and after pics:
Man...our grass looks thirsty...whoops...
Anyway, so we replaced all the crazy bushes with (on the left) a black knight butterfly bush, two pentas, and some lantanas (see below), and (on the right), 3 floribunda rose bushes - two Livin' Easy roses, which have apricot blooms, and one Julia Child rose, which is the old-fashioned yellow rose below, a hybrid tea rose (Lady Bird Johnson rose, which is big and coral and beautiful), and some more lantanas.
This is the Julia Child rose. I've been having a lot of fun pruning all of these flowers. Who knew that I'd like gardening so much? All of the roses have been recovering from transplant shock, but this one is doing the best. I'll post pictures of some of the other roses when their buds bloom.
If you look back at the RockAndPetalHome picture at the opening of this post, you'll see a faded Lady Bird Johnson rose that I pruned off this morning. Keep in mind, it's super faded.
These are some of the lantanas that we have in both beds. They love the heat and are super easy to take care of. They're actually all over the place in Central Texas.
Also...my mailbox Zinnias have gotten a little out of control...hahahaha!! That's not cute...oh well!
The next project we will be tackling will be for Justin to install gutters in the front of the house to protect our new flower babies. He's also going to put rain barrels (hidden by a handmade fence) on the side of our house to catch the water because 1) it's eco-friendly...yay!, and 2) it'll help us save money on our water bill (assuming it rains)...yay!
