Still working on my green thumb

I'm going to bore you with some photos of our yard. It's just that I am SO excited to finally be doing some work outside. I LOVE gardening, but there hasn't been much to do without putting some money into the gardens. Since our plan was to just improve the interior of the house and sell it in three years, gardening was not an option (aside from weeding the existing flower bed).

I thrive in the sun, so I am currently in gardening heaven.

Hostas are a common plan up north and I really wanted to bring that in to our yard. It reminds me of home. We plan on planting Bluebonnets between each hosta. The tree around which these are planted is a pecan tree. The funny part is that the pecan tree is the Texas state tree. Bluebonnets are the Texas state flower. Travis said he wants to hang a confederate flag from the lowest tree branch and then he'll start parking his truck over there.

The canna lily I bought Travis for our anniversary last year is growing back strong.

To replace our four-year-old grill, Travis bought this monster:

That puppy weighs in at almost 150 lbs and is 6 feet wide. We pretty much designed the new patio wall around this thing. The left side is a gas grill, the middle is a charcoal grill and the box on the right is a smoker box. I plan on buying a brisket on my next trip to the grocery store. This is the grill he used to smoke the pork loin we had on Easter.

Travis bought the pavers we are using for the patio on Friday, but was only able to bring home half because of the weight limit on his truck. He went back Saturday and got the other half. Too bad we don't have a fork lift at home because it would have been a lot easier to unload those buggers.

That layout at the front of the picture is how we plan to place the stones. I am getting really excited about this new patio, but I don't know when we'll find time to do it. We need to do it over the weekend so we have several days in a row with the sand compactor. We're going to do this right, dang it!

Here's that killer trench I mentioned...

I've been watering our Sago palms when I water the rest of the plants in the yard. They have not grown at all since we put them in the ground. If anything, they've slowly been wearing away. I was ecstatic to see these alien fingers growing out of the center.

Except now all I think is ALIEN FINGERS when I walk by.

And a few shots of our yard critters... I've noticed a lot of them since I've been spending so much time outside.

Geico should pay me for this shot:

Those lizards are ALL OVER our yard. They particularly like to hang out around the three hose hook-ups and the compost pile. But they've been known to pop up just about anywhere.

Not pictured: The black catepillars that ate my ivy and the toad that shows up periodically next to my potted plants by the garage.