The perils of planting in Cedar City

Well, I am pleased to report that we are already making some progress in our giant to-do list....

This past Saturday, I managed to plant all 117 bulbs I'd bought. It was a beast of a job, but I knew I needed to get them in the ground before it froze (which could be any day now). I've got anemones, crocuses, emperor tulips and "Radiant Perfection" ruffly pink tulips (which were bought at Wal-Mart--everything else came from Home Depot). We'd previously planted a bunch of mixed daffodils, so hopefully some of those will still come up and we'll have flowers all spring!

 There was an unusual amount of creepy spiders...we saw way more than these but these were the biggest. No idea what species that top one is but it had a HUGE puffy back. Brrr.

 I'd bought two more purple heather plants to replace the peonies I'd planted a couple months ago that had turned brown and shriveled up. But when I dug up the bare roots, lo and behold, there were new buds forming under the ground! It turns out they were only MOSTLY dead! Woo-hoo!

 So I had Mark plant the heather in between our rose bushes, and this is what he came across. Trying to dig a simple hole is ridiculous. Our whole yard is like this.

Madelyn and her friend Emma helped by putting the emperor tulip bulbs in all the flower beds where they thought they should go. They did a good job!

I didn't have good luck with the rocks, either. This is trowel #1.

Try to dig a 6-inch hole and you get a pile of boulders...

Mark grew up in North Carolina and he said there are no rocks there. If he ever came across a rock while digging it was pretty exciting. Most were "imported". I can only imagine!

 

Trowel #2. Steel implements are no match for our soil.

It took me four hours of digging and planting to get all the bulbs in the ground, and by the end I was having to use a lantern to see. I actually woke up at 5am the next morning because my right forearm hurt so badly that I had to get up and get some Advil. I used to do four hours of massage a night, and that had never happened to me before! My whole body was sore for a few days, really.

 

 Mark cut back our container garden again, which had become quite wild.

There were lots of cucumbers hiding under all the vines. We still have a ton of cherry tomatoes growing. Next year we'll only do like 1/4 of the vegetable plants that we did this year....

  The rabbit brush on top of our ledge is going crazy right now. I think it's so pretty! I love all the yellow around Cedar City right now from all these plants.

Then on Monday night we went to Home Depot (with an extra floor board from our kitchen) and picked out some carpet samples.

Have I ever mentioned that our portable DVD players are a lifesaver????

I showed these to Madelyn just for fun and she was like, "♥Whoooaahhhh!♥" She liked the scarlet red the best. Haha. No thanks.

We've been hemming and hawing over all the samples for days, but truth being told, they all looked almost exactly the same. Case in point: here are our top two choices:

Soft Collection Modesto II in "Spice"

Soft Collection Modesto II in "Butter Pecan"

Huge difference, right?! I mean, this is why it was so hard to choose a neutral paint color, too. There are about 5,000 different shades that all look almost the same.

Anyway, we went with the Butter Pecan--it's a "twist" fiber. We were also looking at some pile carpets but they were almost too thick (reminded us of grandma carpet) and they were a little more expensive. Mark placed the order today at lunch, and as soon as it arrives, we'll get the installation set up! We're so EXCITED!