It's been a while, I know...

So I realize it's been some time since my last post. We've been out of home, town, state, and even country in the last month. But now we are home and of course the first thing we took care of was dead plants and our jungle of a backyard! We're still in the process of overhauling the back-it's a process that will take some time. Sadly, we had some plants die :( In the front, all three hibiscus shrubs died and two out of the three trees died in the back. But very happily some things I thought that would die survived and are doing even better! Whoo hoo!! The asiatic lillies have sprouted and are about to bloom (can't wait!) and the hydrengas (who I thought were in mortal peril) had way more foliage and potential blooms when we got home. We bought some lovely little shrubs to replace the hibiscus, let us hope they don't disappoint like the hibiscus did. Also, the butterfly bush in the back has gotten HUGE!! It's a monster that I love dearly. And all those petunias I planted as "filler" (that were supposed to die since they're annuals) have thrived through the winter and have taken over. But they are pretty and smell nice, so we'll keep them for a little while longer.
And of course with the arrival of warm weather, it comes time to plant the veggie garden! I learned a lot from last years experiment so we did a few things differently. For starters, we made the garden area about twice as big. We're going to do a nice boarder to separate the veggies from the grass, making it look very official and tidy (just how Matt likes it). I also spaced things out a little better so some more timid plants will not be taken over by the heartier ones, like the squashes. I also opted to not do so many trailing plants like the cucumber (that was a joke!). This years crop includes watermelon (that will be tamed!), pumpkins from seeds (also, they will be more tame), yellow crook-neck squash and zucchini squash, red bell peppers, peas, strawberries, parsley and thyme and a hanging pot of celebrity tomatoes. I'm pretty excited to see how it all does this year since it was such a smashing success last year!
As for the inside, things were in pretty good order still. We are putting some pictures in our bathroom, to make it look finished, as well as knobs on all the cabinets! We got on the ball for that really fast and Matt did a wonderful job putting all the knobs on in no time. Now our kitchen looks a little more polished.
Sadly our external hard-drive has been malfunctioning so I'm having to upload pics onto our hard drive, which is taking some time. But no fear, I will be posting pics of all the goings on.
In horse-related news, I have joined a local riding group and am now meeting people! YAY! It's been fun so far and I have met some very nice people. I'll be posting pics from rides on here too.
That's all for now. Once these pics load I'll post them up! And as always, you can find us on flickr for pics to be posted too!