Water Woes

Yesterday's sudden downpour wreaked havoc on our neighborhood's streets.  We had a few potholes before, but now we've got some serious craters:

What Do You Do When Your Husband Turns 40?

I guess if you're me, you try to kill him with extreme yard work.  Poor Richard...  I really gave us both a workout today with landscaping the back of the house.  

Earlier this week I took advantage of a sale at Dayton's Garden Center.  If you buy more than 10 azaleas, they were half off ($3.99 each!).  So I picked up 12 of them, intending on landscaping the back of the house since it is so dull.  Unfortunately, we needed to pull up A LOT of sod to make this happen.  Here are the before and after photos...

Along the back of the house we basically had grass, weeds, and a few hostas around the window wells.  

We had very little color going on:

Since the plants are pretty small right now, they haven't made much of a difference, but they'll get bigger.  I moved a butterfly bush from the front of the house to under the kitchen window.

Next on the project list... Moving the pile of dirt and shavings from the ground up oak tree stump around the house.  The shavings will be good around the azaleas and blueberries, which will like the additional acidic mulch.

Well, it's good to know that we were able to get as much done as we did on such a nice (but a little too sunny) day.  I'm pretty sure Richard is happy to go back to work tomorrow and leave the yard behind!

Green Paper Kitty Shenanigans

What happens when you combine about 80 sheets of green tissue paper, a table fan, and two frisky kitties?  Oh, about 24 hours of romping, rolling, and stalking!  Here's just a sampling of the kitty shenanigans, starring Scout and Monkey.

One Way to Celebrate a 40th Birthday

Give him 40 gifts!

Richard got his geek on today as he opened a variety of gifts, but I think he liked the Green Lantern ones the best!

We stopped at Mom and Dad's after dinner and Richard was greeted by a bunch of numbered parcels:

Richard will need to take his vitamins to get through opening all those gifts!

Did you know that you could get a Starship Enterprise Pizza Cutter?  Richard didn't either!

Awww.... It's a plush Hal Jordan!

And, uh, a bobblehead Hal Jordan?

And a pop-up book with Hal Jordan?

And another Hal Jordan t-shirt????

Okay, that's just a bunch of green tissue paper to bring home to the kitties to play in later!

We ended with a large blank canvas.  That's something for Richard to work on over the next 40 years!

It was a fun way to end a fun day.  And tomorrow is his party... So more pictures to come!

DC Comics-Green Lantern Head Knocker 1 (from S2)
Funko Green Lantern Plushies
STAR TREK USS ENTERPRISE PIZZA CUTTER
DC Super Heroes: The Ultimate Pop-Up Book

Public Enemy Number One

Every year our neighbor complains about the groundhog living between our yards.  Last year a groundhog was responsible for eating the bottoms off of half of my tomatoes and the year before I witnessed a groundhog finishing off the last of my near-harvest Brussels sprouts (which take a VERY long time to grow).  Groundhogs are not welcome in my yard.  This one has a Havahart trap with his name written all over it.