In other news...

It's spring break so I have a minute to think and relax (hence the two blog posts!)! Yesterday I bought a winter jasmine bush at the farmer's market and planted it over the old sink hole.



It's very small now, but it will get as high as 4 feet tall and as much as 7 feet wide, and everywhere the branches touch the ground they will put down roots. All those roots are good for preventing erosion. In early spring it blooms with little yellow flowers. It'll fit right in with all the other bushes along the back fence, which this week I found out are Forsythia. I found that out from all the little yellow flowers blooming all over the place.

There are some sort of flower blooming all over the backyard, where the hostas usually are. I know they're not the hostas, cause those are started to peep out, and look very different. These might be buttercups. They haven't started blooming yet, but they are on the brink.

The little tree in the backyard has been putting forward flowers for the past few weeks as well:


Anyone know what type of tree this is?

Yesterday we finally finished getting rid of all the branches that came down when a giant branch fell off our huge old sycamore tree over Christmas while we were away. The branch brought down a bunch of vines, so we had to cut those off as high as we could reach. We also had to saw the branches down into 5 foot chunks so the garbage collectors will take them away. I still have to go tie those up and bring them out front, but it's raining right now.

We also started digging up this big stump. When we moved in we cut down a dead tree that was outside our window.

The tree was just to the right of the the bush in the foreground. But now I think it looks kinda bare, and the tree was also blocking the view from our bedroom windows to the neighbor's back porch, which we would like blocked again. So we're digging out the old stump, and once it's dug out we are probably going to plant a twilight crape myrtle, which after a few years of careful pruning should look something like this: .

They bloom for around 2 and a half months of the year, and I think it'll be nice to look at from our bedroom (the 6 box shaped windows are the ones to our bedroom).

Only before I order the tree, I'm going to make sure we can get out the stump. We worked on it for a while yesterday but eventually got tired and gave up for the day. Hopefully we will be able to get that out and order the new tree and plant it over spring break or soon after. I'm hoping it'll stop raining and we can also spend a couple of days trimming the weeds and tall grass with our new weed wacker, and cleaning up the yard with our new leaf blower, so that everything is nice and dead-leaf-free for when spring REALLY starts to hit in a few weeks. A few trees around here have started flowering, along with the forsythia, but it's really just beginning, and I'm really excited to see all the flowers on my property for the first time!