This is my thumb...it is not green

Clark and I have a problem.  Every year around this time, we forget that we are who we are, and think that maybe we should get outside and do some gardening.  We buy an over abundance of plants, plant them, and then sit back and watch them die.  Seriously.  Every year since we've been married.  I don't know what it is about spring that makes you forget that you can't garden.  I am in love with the idea of things growing I guess. 

This year, we upped the ante.  Clark decided that we needed to buy trees and shrubs on top of the flowers we usually buy and then proceed to kill.  The bar has been raised!  We bought five trees/shrubs all together.

Left to right:  a saskatoon bush, a lilac bush, a bush called a red dwarf, and a red currant bush

This is a crab apple tree. 

The lilac and the red dwarf were going to get planted on a stretch of flower bed that has been overrun by weeds for the past couple of years.  This is the before picture.

And here's the during/after picture.

Clark had a lot of fun using the rototiller.  It took us FOREVER to figure out how to get the wheel to stay in the upright position.  The instructions were not very helpful and YouTube let me down.  You would think that SOMEBODY out there would do a video tutorial for people like us.  Maybe I should do one before we return the tiller tomorrow!

Tyler hung outside with us all day today.  Hopefully he sleeps well tonight from all that fresh air.  He's a funny kid.  He'll sit up for at least an hour at a time, then he gets fussy and needs to lie down on his back.  I keep telling him if he'd only learn how to crawl, he could do a whole lot more!

Annika dressed herself this morning.  She insisted on wearing long sleeves with her shorts.  I told her if she wanted long sleeves, she should probably wear pants.  She said that her legs didn't get cold, just her arms.  At least her clothes match. 

And what can I say about this little girl?  She's just too darn cute!  She's been battling a cold all week, so she's been grumpier than usual.  I'm thrilled I got a smile out of her here!

Do you see the ugly bug?  They are EVERYWHERE in my soil.  We have an RV parking pad that we are slowly turning into grass (I forgot to take a picture of it).  The soil has been packed down for years on it...and yet these bugs still seem to live in there.  They give me the willies.  Anyone know what they are? 

By the time we were finished, it was 9:30 and the sun was starting to set, so I'll have to share "after" pictures with you at a later time.  I'm looking forward to seeing if my tree and shrubs will make it through a year with us!