a transplant story, picture style

There is one thing we Luces do very little of around here, and that is garden.  For three years in a row, I tried planting flowers at the beginning of spring with the same result every year: a garden full of dead sticks by the time mid-summer hit.  This has led us to depend upon  the heartier plants of the vegitation world to keep our yard landscaped, but even shrubs need some TLC every once in while. And from the looks of our yard before yesterday afternoon, they hadn't been getting any.

It was the sad condition of our beds that led to yesterday's total shrub transplant.  I'm not  going to lie, what we did yesterday may simply be a death sentence to the plants that have lived 6 years in front of our house.  Fingers crossed that is not the case!

Here we go, a picture by picture recap of the big transplant.  What good transplant story begins without something being ripped from the ground?  That's what I thought.  So here you have the shrubs in question, de-rooted, and sitting nervously in the grass, very, very unsure about what will happen next.

Next is the dirt, or the mud-padded-paws phase, as Marianna enjoyed calling it yesterday.  Our girl loves dirt, and her and Nathan had plenty of it.  They dug up the old dirt, added the new dirt, and mixed it all together to create (hopefully) a wonderful place of residence for our bushes.  

Somewhere along the way, the dirt led to silliness, as it is prone to do in these kinds of stories.  There is something about being that dirty and not being in trouble that brings out the kid in my two hard workers.

But as you can see, the trash can gives testament to the fact that it wasn't no work and all play.  It was filled to the brim with weeds, trimmings, and the like before our day was done.  

And finally, many showers, foot scrubbings, and hosings down later, we had a completed transplant.  Adrienne, all bright and sunshiney from her nap, was happy to finally get in on some of the action, even if it was just the "after" shot.

There you have it.  I guess with transplants there is always that tenuous rejection period, and I'm hoping our shrubs have the heart to hold on and not die.  My thumb is definitely not green enough to start from scratch!