Flower bed refresh + how we are surviving quarantine

It has been a while since I have posted. Life has been a bit different for awhile. The husband and I have been sheltering-in-place and taking it easy. I work remotely, so I have been throwing myself into client work, unsure if I will even have work the following week.

I have been assured that work will continue, at least through the month of May. Right now, that is all the assurance I need. I feel more comfortable taking a break, so I am back to spending time on my hobbies, including blogging!

FLOWER BED REFRESH

This weekend, despite the insistence of my mother-in-law, I headed to a small plant store. I opted for a small mom and pop store versus the big box store to a) avoid crowds of people and b) support a small business. I have been itching to update the flower beds in my backyard.

I can see my back patio from my office. I am in my office all day, Monday through Friday. That means that I see my ugly backyard all the time. To make matters worse, our new neighbors have a small daughter that plays in our shared yard quite a bit during the day. I am feeling the pressure to step up my game.

At the plant shop, I found these beauties. I loved them so much I bought 20 small plants for the front yard. I know I was there for the backyard, but I felt inspired to punch up the front flower bed. The back flower beds are bare and are too much of a blank canvas. I think I am going to need to layer in flowers in order to get it right.

Also at the store I saw these. They would be so adorable as an edge to the flower bed. I like the punch of green and the little puff-ball flowers. If I am going to use my layering technique, I am going to need these last.

The main flowers I am going to use are going to be limelight hydrangeas. These are limelight hydrangeas. Aren’t these flowers beautiful? I am going to buy a few plants and line the back of the large flower bed.

After I got the pink flowers home, the husband was happy to help me line up the flowers and dig little holes. We must have spent two hours digging holes and getting the flowers just where we want them.

Here is a shot of them close up. I am not a huge fan of the pine straw, but it is required by our HOA for the front yard.

Here is a shot of the full flower bed with our gardenias, sky pencil holly, and our lovely new pink flowers.

Here is a full shot of the front of our house. You can see the dog lanyard we had set up for the girls. They hung out with us outside while the husband and I worked. The weather was in the mid-70’s and breezy. The girls just loved it!

HOW WE ARE SURVIVING QUARANTINE

Let’s talk about quarantine. The husband and I have been making due. As mentioned above, I have been busying myself with my job. I am so incredibly fortunate to still have my job…and all my benefits.

I would love to be working on reorganizing my closets and purging all the junk I no longer want. Unfortunately, that just isn’t where I am at right now. For those of you that are in the same boat, here are a few things I have been doing that you might also enjoy:

1. Listen to albums. Not just your favorite playlist. Listen to an entire album. Cover to cover. We have a bunch of albums on vinyl. We have been putting them on and turning up the volume. It is has been very nice to pull them out and listen to them from cover to cover.
2. Light candles. I have some great candles, like this and this. They fill the house with smells that I associate with happiness.
3. Start a movie marathon. We can’t go to the movie theater. That is fine as most of the movies I really want to see have been delayed until this fall. To fill the gap, we decided to watch all of the James Bond movies beginning with Dr. No. We finished The Man with the Golden Gun this weekend. Other great series include the Marvel movies as well as the Star Wars movies.
4. Cook something from scratch. We made french bread for the first time a couple of weeks ago. It entertained us for several hours with all the mixing, rising, kneading, etc. We let the dough sit in the refrigerator overnight and let it rise again in the morning. It was some pretty great tasting bread. We decided to serve it with homemade soup.
5. If you really feel like you have to clean & organize something, take your old books you are never going to read again to a Little Lending Library. There is one a couple of miles from my home. I donated a handful of books today and even found a new book that caught my eye. Interested? You can find a Little Lending Library near you at https://littlelocator.org/.

These are tough times. We have to remember to be good to one another. Most importantly, we have to remember to be good to ourselves.