Sunday, February 17, 2008

Happy 100th Post!

This is my 100th post! Wow! Now what? I have been blogging for less than a year and already I have done 100 posts. Does that mean that I am spending too much time blogging? Possibly.

So, what to talk about? Did I tell y'all that I finally finished our "engagement scrapbook"? Yep, it's done. The only thing we didn't have any pictures of for me to scrapbook was Scott's bachelor party. I don't think anyone took pictures, unless Johnny did. I have asked Scott to email him. So, I may end up adding another page if he does. That was a lot of fun. But, I'm glad it's done. I found a bunch of pictures the other day that I failed to put in our wedding album...and I used up some of that paper that I had bought especially for that, so now I am on the lookout for that particular paper to be on sale. They had it at Michael's the other day for $0.59 per page. Whatever!


Anyway, I have moved on to scrapbooking about other things. I have so many ideas for pages. I have been working on this page for a couple of weeks now, as time permitted. It has taken me quite a while as it was very labor intensive. But, I am happy with how it turned out. What do you think?












Scott has really been enjoying his Wii, too. He completely finished Super Mario Galaxy and has now moved on to a game he borrowed from a guy at work called Meteoroid, or something like that. It seems very boring to me, but Scott seems to like it. Scott was watching a GT basketball game today. He said that they lost. I can't remember the last time he told me they won. Hmmm...that's not good, is it? What a bummer.

We did a little work out in our garden yesterday! I pruned our shrubs and monkey grass and Scott cleaned up the area under our front bird feeder and pulled up the dead Lantana that was around the air conditioner that I should have pulled up months ago. Next weekend we are going to prune our Crepe Myrtles. Working at Pike does have its advantages. Our VP of Learning, Wayne, has started doing lunch and learns about gardening and the first one was about pruning. I felt very empowered after having the class. In the three years that we have lived in this house, I had never pruned our shrubs. We have pruned the Crepe Myrtle before, but I have an article from Southern Living called "Crepe Murder". I thought it was very helpful. If you want to prune your plants, the time is now. Anything that flowers in the summer (May, June, etc.) should be pruned now. Anything that flowers in the spring (February, March, and I think April) should be pruned after it flowers (like azaleas). Some plants grow off of new wood and some (like hydrangeas) grow off of old wood. Wayne gave us some handouts, so if you want me to scan them and email them to you, just let me know. I'll post some before and after pictures of our pruning. Oh! While we were cleaning up the yard, I pulled the dead stems and leaves off of my Stella De Oro lilies from last season and found the tips of the new growth peeking up at me! How exciting! It is also time to prune your monkey grass. I have liriope, so I gave it a crew cut (like, to the ground). If you have mondo grass, you should just leave it alone. After you prune, you should feed your plants so that their first growth spurt in the Summer is huge. And, while you are at it, you should put out Preen, too for weed prevention. I just mixed fertilizer and Preen together and used my hand-spreader to do it all at once. I love my hand spreader, it has a wrist support and everything. I think it is made by Scott's. It was well worth the extra $5 for the wrist support!







Before pictures.





Here are the after pictures. You know, it's kind of hard to tell the difference. But, I filled up an entire garbage can with clippings. (Do you see the cats in the window, they watched us the whole time.)





Here's the De Oro lilies before and after. I can't wait until they start blooming!









This is what my spreader looks like. I really like it.







I LOVE my Southern Living subscription. I may be revealing what a nerd I am, but this is what I do when I find a good article or a recipe I want to try: I pull them out and put them in a book. For the recipes, I have a manila folder I leave them in until we try them. If we don't like it, we throw it away. If we like it, we put it in a three ring binder down in page protectors. I have a separate three ring binder with gardening articles in page protectors. I have referred back to these articles many times. That's how I learned how to divide lilies and hostas, which has proved very useful!

So, that's it for now. Have a great week!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Congratulations on your 100th post. I think I have read just about every one of them. I enjoy reading them and keeping up with you guys. Your yard looks great. I know yard work is hard work. Have a great week.
Tracy

Shana Stringer said...

I love our scrapbook page, I can't wait for our scrapbook weekend.

Anonymous said...

I love your scrapbook page too! You did a great job. I wish I had the time for scrapbooking (and the creativity).
Tracy