Mother's Day Weekend 2016 & Landscaping Updates

We had an unusual Mother's Day weekend this year.  On Friday, the 3rd-5th graders at our school hosted Grandparents' Day (earlier than the date Hallmark recognizes but before school lets out for the summer). My parents wanted to attend our son's assembly this year, but 3rd graders started at 8:30, which was much too early for them to get here given rush-hour traffic. So I went in their place and ate enough fruit and chocolate goodies for both of them. :-)

Our son's class presented a United States geography (states and capitals) sound-off followed by a recorder concert which was surprisingly pleasant given the shrillness of the instrument and the age of the performers.  Our band director is such a humorous, fun-loving guy that he makes every concert enjoyable.  They played several classic hymns and "This Old Man" for the grandfathers.  Ha!

My parents arrived later that morning and took both my son and my daughter out to lunch.  What a treat that was for them.While they were at lunch, our landscaper finished up all the landscaping projects he had been working on for the past five weeks to address our water run-off issues, to add instant gratification privacy landscaping, and to build us a patio for our fire pit.

In the picture below, there is a large catch basin under all that rock attached to a 150' underground drain that runs under the porch around the house and down the length of the other side of our house.  He added two dry creeks, this new mulched natural area, and a Rose of Sharon.  Mom gave me the hanging plant and stand shown above for Mother's Day. We have two climbing roses and trellises for each side that we still need plant.  Then we'll add some liriope, Hostas, and possibly Indian Hawthorne whenever we find the time.

He planted a 15'-20' Nelly Stevens Holly next to my fitness room window to block the unsightly view out that window of the neighbor's shed, added 50/50 to raise the soil up to level of basketball court and laid new sod all along this side where the ran run off had washed it away last year.

His crew added fresh mulch all around the house, lawn perimeter, and at the base of scattered lawn trees.

Our next project will be a stone stacked, tiered retaining along this front side.

Along the fence, he planted two Nelly Stevens Holly (4-6'), Muskogee Lavernder, three enormous Crepe Myrtle, six Osmanthus (4'), and three Loropetalum.  He also replaced our wimpier wax myrtles with newer, heartier ones and  moved our crepe myrtle from the side yard to this back corner and expanded the natural areas closing off back yard.

The patio construction was fun to watch.

You know you are getting impatient for the construction to be finished when a (random) picture (of WIP taken to test out your new iPhone) is worth a thousand words (from movie quotes and song titles).

"If you build it, they will come." (Field of Dreams)
"Road to Nowhere" (Talking Heads)
"We're Half Way There." (Bon Jovi, Livin' on a Prayer)
"Bless the Broken Road" (Rascal Flatts)
"He's Not Finished With Me Yet" (Brandon Heath)
etc.

After the kids' lunch outing with Nana and Pops, my husband and son packed and left for the spring outing at the coast with the Y Guides while I waited on hold for over an hour to speak with an IRS agent over exorbitant, bogus charges I ended up having to pay anyway.  As often as we get audited for our charitable contributions (doesn't anyone tithe and support missions and charities anymore?), I sometimes wonder if we are being targeted for our Christian views.

Saturday wasn't as eventful as my daughter would like because her mom is a teacher, and teachers must do lesson planning over the weekends. And I had to clean bathrooms plus other chores, meet a golf client at the new swap stop, and get in a much needed trail ride after a week of steady rain.  I did make time to buy her swim suits, take her out to eat, treat her to ice-cream and play card games (and stayed up past 2am getting my lesson plans done as a result), but compared to the fun her brother was having on the retreat (she knows, because she's already enjoyed three years of Indian Princesses...well it's now called "Y-guides" for boys and girls because so few people are willing to admit that one's gender is determined biologically, not emotionally, and apparently both "Indian" and "Princess" are banned words in this new progressive world of utter lunacy).  She beat me in every game of Set we played, and I never ever let her win on purpose.

I also earned some much needed "fun mom" points by pulling pranks on our pets.  Did we rescue a cat, elephant, or anteater?

On Sunday, we drove to my hometown to spend Mother's Day with my parents and my brother's family, but it wasn't the same without our guys. At least they sent me this picture from camp with some early morning Mother's Day greetings.

I got to see some high school friends at my parents' church including Craig, who brought my husband and I together.  (He and I were good friends in high school, and he and my husband sang together in the USNA Glee Club.) I also Rodney, a friend since kindergarten, at the restaurant he manages after church.  It was a nice visit, but my daughter was out of sorts. She missed her dad and her brother.  She was probably feeling jealous, and she was apparently tired because she doesn't sleep well when her dad isn't here.  At least she perked up after lunch and had fun posing for pictures with Nana.

When Nana's glasses darken in the sun, our drama queens starts having some fun.

One of the best gifts on Mother's day was driving home to find my husband and son already home. They had driven back early to be with me on Mother's Day and were outside washing the van by hand.  They were exhausted, so we didn't get the planting projects done I had hoped, but they were home, and that was enough for me.

After my son had written in my birthday card, "Mom, thank you for..." and then left the rest of the page blank, I was thrilled to receive a handmade Mother's day card from him with real sentences in it.  He used big words, proper spelling, and neat handwriting.  His grammar isn't perfect, yet, but for a third grader, he really tried. This boy almost always signs cards by simply writing Love, [His name], so this card that he put effort into was a keeper.  He also drew flowers which he knows I like.

 My daughter usually writes a sweet note, and she did not disappoint this time either.

During March 2015, we began meeting with contractors to figure out what to do with our our virtually useless lot which had started out flat and surrounded by trees when we selected it but ended up treeless and severely sloped by the time the builder finished our house. Work finally began a few weeks before Christmas. After adding a porch, deck, walkway, patio (aka bunny exercise ring, soccer drill chamber, "volley-dodge ball" court, deserted island), fire pit, three french drains wrapping around our house, a few dry creeks, dozens of trees, numerous shrubs, mounds of mulch, hidden dams, new natural areas, truckloads of soil and sod, and whatever else I'm forgetting to keep the yard from washing down the hill again, we finally got to use our backyard to the fullest on Mother's Day. The kids "commissioned" our long awaited fire pit patio tonight by serving me S'mores for Mother's Day dessert. They even saved me an extra 5oz European gourmet dark chocolate bar because  they know I like my chocolate hits dark, straight, and smooth. :-)

Hopefully the grass will turn green and the new shrubs/plants will bloom in the next few weeks.