Spring Planting

I love the green growth and new life of spring!  Just not the weeds that were taking over my flower bed a few weeks ago.  Sadly, some of the weeds were taller than the shrubs in the flower bed in the back yard.

A couple weekends ago I tackled the weeds, and removed some ugly shrubs at the ends of the flower bed (the ones that look dead).  I didn't realize how difficult they would be to remove.  The root system was huge...and stubborn!

Woody helped.

And Ben took that time to rake the yard.  I think there were a few more leaves than he anticipated:

Then I needed to fill the empty space!  Last weekend I spent most of the day Saturday and a little time on Sunday planting some colorful new additions and rearranging shrubs.

I think it looks a little better.  :-)

I also found this great ornamental pepper plant for the patio!

Looking forward to lots of sunshine and flowers this spring.  Hope your's is beautiful as well.

Armadillo Dash Family Visit

This past weekend, Marci and I took leave of Austin to visit her sister's family and parents.

The occasion for the visit was that her sister was running a half marathon and I had decided to join in on the running fun and ran the 5k they had going on the same day. At just under 40°F, it was a chilly start to the races, but after running for a while the cold weather felt great! I'm pretty sure it was the cold weather that helped drive me to setting a personal best 5k time.

Outside of the race, we had fun just hanging out with everybody and I got a chance to practice my photography some more.

I'm going to attempt to use pictures instead of words to go over the weekends events.

there was swinging,

and dog slobber,

then more swinging,

and then pink baseball,

and tag in the park (the tree was base),

and guitar playing,

and grilling (yum),

and more dog slobbers,

A very fun (and quick) weekend!