Green Acres - HA!

No one tells you about landscaping when you plan to move a house out into the country. Or I suppose when you build one. No one mentions that when you try to plant those beautiful flowerbeds along your new front porch that the dirt there was originally part of the pad for the house - you know - the one they built up and levelled and PACKED SOLID so the house wouldn't slide down the property when you got 17 inches of rain since January.

Because if they had, I wouldn't have spent several hours with a hoe, hand tiller, shovel and mini rake trying to break it up enough so I could plant snap dragons, day lilies, marigolds and a plethora of verbena, zinnia and phlox seeds. I would have just put my foot down and said to my husband "I don't *care* that you bought a huge ole tractor, that won't help me with my flower beds, now you get thyself to Lowe's and BUY ME A ROTOTILLER!!!

Seriously.

But I must say - the flower beds do help with the house looking more like a home, and it will look even better once a few of those seeds sprout. I took some of the leftover brick from the house and created a border that is straight in spots, and wavy in others. That might have something to do with the unevenness of our yard. We've also had sod put down over about half the yard - so we have grass. Sure - it looks like it's gasping it's last breath before it dries out and turns to hay - but the landscape dude tells us that's just shock. I had no idea that grass was so sensitive. Apparently it has to adjust to its new home. At least the grass doesn't wake me up 4 times a night like my dog did the first week out here.

Tonight, we plant pinto beans in our garden. Not because I'm a big fan of plain ole pinto beans, or beans and rice, or beans and cornbread, although my husband loves them. Nope - I love me some green pintos. That's right - I pick 'em before they get all big and beany and I plan to can 'em just like my grandma did, and y'all - if you love home canned green beans, you will LOVE green pintos. Honestly. They are the ultimate. Cook 'em with some small new potatoes and I could just make a whole meal out of them. Which is why we are planting half an acre four rows of them.

We're also growing a ton of tomatoes, which I think I mentioned before. We had to re-plant due a hailstorm. And when we did that, I sure as shootin got some peppers to plant too. Both jalepenos and bell. Mmmm - hot sauce! M also decided to plant corn, cucumbers, watermelon and canteloupe in our "small garden." Now mind you - he didn't bother to pull any of the weeds that had come up since the garden area was plowed up. So guess what I get to do tonight? Along with my short young helpers otherwise known as my sons.

Last Tuesday, I took off work in the morning so that DishNetwork could come install their lovely two-room DVR tuner in my new house. I waited and waited, and planted lavender bushes by my porch steps. I then waited and waited and watched the landscape dude lay sod in my yard. After I planted my daylilies, I called the local phone service company to find out where the heck my Dish dude was and discovered that since the local phone service company couldn't install our land line for another month, they called Dish and canceled our appointment.

Without telling ME.

After a couple of hours of frustrating phone calls between said phone company and Dish and getting hung up on TWICE, I finally said pfft - called Dish directly and got it all set up for the Dish dude to do his thing tomorrow afternoon. I also expressed my extreme frustration with the phone company, and lo and behold, I get home the other day and there is some kind of trencher machinery out by our house and I'm thinking it may not be a month before we have a phone line after all. Heh.

Ah. The country life.