Up in the Uintas

One day we took Sebas's and Jubal's friends (Will and Jason H.) up to a lake in the Uintas.  I forgot the name of it though. It's accessible by vehicle--but I would only take a high clearance 4 wheel drive vehicle, that's for sure.  It was a beautiful day and much catching of animals happened.

Some Big Changes

So I'm not sure when but I think the drought and the unsuccessful attempts to keep our lawn alive (I was the one watering and moving sprinklers, etc), plus I just REALLY love a garden, made me decide to re-landscape our front yard and make it waterwise and add in beautiful bee friendly plants that dumb deer wouldn't eat.  

This is an old google maps shot of the yard, what it looked like before.  I had trimmed some stuff out but it honestly wasn't much better.  

I planned it so precisely.  What kind of plants I would use.  How I wanted it to look.  Made sure it would be waterwise with the hellstrip not even needing water at all.  I was going to mulch the hellstrip with pea gravel from our side drive way--we wanted to remove that anyway and pour cement or something. 

So I covered our lawn in plastic with the intent to kill it further.  

This video shows my plan the best.  On the side lawn I wanted to lay paving stones to make a pathway to the gate, since the grass was dead there anyway, and I was going to fill in behind the pine tree with junipers and other ground cover med size to small bushes. 

And I made a couple trips to public lands (I called first and it is legal to take rocks for free under a certain amount) to gather rocks.  I love lichen covered rocks, reminds me of my Grandpa's ranch.

AND THEN LEO WAS OFFERED A JOB IN WICHITA AND WE DECIDED TO TAKE IT.

So while I had planned on leaving the plastic on all winter, now I was stuck having to quickly fix up our yard to be able to sell it--fast.  YIKES.  Needless to say the plastic wasn't on long enough so the grass wasn't fully dead.  But I did what I could.

My beautiful rock garden I had planned with all sorts of hens and chicks and plants that needed no watering.  And our own little cairns.

And then we mulched the other parts of the lawn and I replanted my irises (along with others I had already bought) throughout that front part where they'd get full sun.  And I carefully planted other plants so there'd be blooms in every season, all waterwise, all perennials.  

I replaced the brick front border with stone to continue the rock garden look. This part would have had poppies and coneflowers and blanket flowers. There were so many plants I had planned.      

And it looked good (kind of, the bindweed was already going crazy in it) for all two weeks because the grass wasn't dead enough.  Etc.  And when we drove by this last summer, it looked awful.  I wanted to cry.  

This part we didn't even try to fix up--you can see where we were going to mulch and stuff though.  Although I did plant some junipers and other bushes.  I can still picture this yard all blooming in my mind, three years from when I planted and me taking care of it the whole time.  It would have been amazing.  I promise.  😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

Miriam's Wedding and Flowers

I helped my sister Andrea plan and decorate for Miriam's reception.  And I did her wedding flowers--sort of.  The bouquet above--that was totally me.  The rest, well, I convinced Andrea that it would be extremely cost effective to buy faux flowers from another wedding off of KSL and let me spray paint them.  She had her doubts but trusted me enough to let me do it.  It worked wonderfully!!  I bought up every color of purple spray paint from four different stores and then went to town.  I was so happy with the results.  Yay!!!  And like I said, I helped Andrea and Miriam visualize and then plan for the rest of the decorations too, and it was so fun.  I love doing stuff like this.  Andrea's best friend Debra helped a ton--they had the reception in Debra's mom's backyard, and Debra strung up all the lights, which just made the whole thing magical.  

Pre spray paint and post.  

All post spray paint.

Pre spray paint.

Post spray paint.

Pre spray paint.  I just took out all the orchids.  They just didn't spray paint well, and then I did buy a couple stems from Hobby Lobby to add in instead.  

Spray painting process.  Had to isolate those flowers.  

It turned out so MAGICAL.  Then Andrea gave Debra all the flowers to thank her for her help because Debra's oldest daughter's favorite color is purple and she knows that will be her wedding colors, so she plans on reusing them.  Makes me happy that they'll still be good for someone else.  

I did redo the cake ones.