Green Thumb and Brown Noser

WOW!  What a weekend!  I am exhausted.  This weekend we had a blast with the kids.  We worked outside and inside the house.  Projects are something the kids love to "help" with.  (Fortunately we were granted quite a bit of patience for this weekend.)  Saturday, we decided to do some planting.  Mark was all over this!  He loves nature, earth, anything having to do with saving the environment.  Needless to say he was SO hyper.  He is definitely a "doer."  Everyone helped Dad dig the hole for the new ash tree we put in the back yarn.  Now, if you have ever been out here to see us, you know that we live on a mountain made mostly of rock. ( Need i say more?)  So, it wasn't so much digging as chipping away the ground with a pick ax.  Very different than planting a tree in the Midwest!    John would pound away at the rocks then the kids would dive into the hole to see who could pull out the biggest rock.   So it was by no means a coincidence that mom bought a relatively small tree, so the hole did not need to be too big.    In about 5 years we may actually have shade.  Yeah!  Trees are few and far between here so shade is a precious thing.  

After the tree was in we moved to the front.  We had planted dry root rose bushes that i ordered from a nursery in Tipp City, Ohio.  I had used this particular variety in one of the houses in ohio and it had done fantastically.  But this is not Ohio, so all but 2 died.  Since we were already digging holes we decided to get new rose bushes to replace the pathetic looking  sticks poking out of the ground. 

 I got 2 lavender colored roses for Emma and 2 pink for me.  Thankfully, the holes had already been chipped away and rocks removed from the last planting so the kids were able to do the digging.

Then somehow I was coerced by Emma into hanging some of our fall decorations.  Talk about a project starter.  I baned  her from getting anything else out until the actual change of seasons on September 21.  We even planted pansies, which bloom here all winter.

We finished the planting and started cleaning up.  I went inside to start dinner.  I noticed Ginger had been outside by herself which is never a good thing.  I went over to the door to call her.  There she was sitting, being all cute, with a snout full of topsoil.  Ginger loves to eat topsoil.  My immediate thought was "OH, no the tree."  Oh, the tree was fine.  There was however a 4 inch hole where she had buried her nose into the ground and eaten about 2 cups of topsoil!!!