March Is Almost Over - Where Did It Go?

Hi everyone!  Can you believe I'm actually blogging again!?

It's been a few weeks, and just to give you a few updates:

• Noel's been working night shift, so we haven't seen much of each other lately, except on weekends!  But he's between jobs just for this weekend, so we've had a nice time hanging out, getting some stuff done around the house, and going out for fantastic Indian food.  Yum. 

• My new job is going extremely well.  I'm enjoying it so much!  The people are nice, the work is challenging, fun, and exciting!  It's invigorating to be doing something different - and I'll be involved in LOTS of face-to-face training, which is one of my favorite things to do.  I'm lucky I get paid for it!  :)

• It's already warm here - I took some pictures today to share with those of you who are looking forward to spring, to remind you what it looks like!

So I might have taken a secret picture of my neighbor's house, just to show you how pretty the azaleas are.   Don't tell them, ok? 

We don't really have much of anything blooming around our house yet except for the little wildflowers growing in our yard.  We call them grass, even though our entire yard is basically just a variety of weeds.  I'm ok with that.  Green = Grass.

 

But!  We will have lots of pretty blooms!  Our canna lilies are coming in nicely - we had to cut everything down to the ground level with all the freezes we had this year, but it's growing back nicely.  So are the lantanas.  So far the only thing that isn't growing back yet is our monsterous 8-10 ft tall hibiscus.  I fear it didn't make it.  At least we have the cannas:



 

 

And you can't really tell, but our little peach tree in the background is greening out all over.  :)


So Noel and I will readily admit that we are...not the most diligent about watering our yard.  Which is why we have weeds and not grass.  We have pots by our mailbox that have contained over the course of 2 years:

- Sweet potato vine
- Little purple flowery things
- Mexican heather

All of which died because they dried out.  So we decided this year to just embrace our laziness and go with a safer option:

Cactus!  These are calling Boxing Glove cacti, because the little new buds look like boxing gloves/fists.  We'll see how they work.  We feel like official Texas homeowners, having cacti in the front yard!

Also - for those of you who may be slightly clumsy and/or like to try touching things you shouldn't (Examples: Is the stove hot? Let me check! or Eew...that looks slimy.  Let's find out!), you may want to either (1) get super-thick gloves when planting cactus, or (2) hire someone else to do it for you.  Because these little guys HURT.  They'd be awesome to plant under windows to prevent burglars getting in that way.  I still have little thorns in my fingers. 

And now on to the garden proper!  We've worked hard this year to amend the "soil" in our yard, but with limited results.  I set out the little seedlings a few weeks ago, and sadly a lot of them didn't make it.  Some of them did, and for some plants I just put seeds straight in the ground.  And things are coming up!  We put out a soaker hose today hoping that would help with the onslaught of heat we're getting ready to see in a few months.

The watering is working!  Look!  Lima bean plants!

 

And the little seed bonbons that my friend Lisa gave to me?  Have started sprouting!!  Neato!

 

 It was so pretty out today that we decided to grill!  Noel got the grill started and then sat down with a Shiner Bock (National Beer of Texas) to relax for a few.  Here's our patio with the pergola we built (not yet covered with fabric because...um...laziness?)  And our fancy table and our brand new patio chairs! 

But lest you get too jealous of the salad days we're already enjoying here in the suburbs of H-town, remember that we technically live in a town called Spring.  For a reason.  We are swimming in pollen.  This is at a seam on our patio - the light yellow is pollen that's still remaining AFTER we had 1 1/2 days of rain. 

Everything here is tinged in yellow. My car? Yellow. Noel's truck? Yellow. Our house? Yellower. When it rains we have yellow puddles. I now take an allergy pill with my vitamins every morning.  Want blonde highlights?  Go stand under a tree for 20 minutes. 

But it could be worse, right?  At least we'll have lima beans!