Bacon and Beef and Green Thumbs, oh my!

When we were in Target yesterday, I found these adorable wrist rattles in the shape of a pig head and a cow head. I figured it would be super amusing (for me) to put them on Turtle. Well, he loves them. And he sucks on them and licks them, so we have named them Bacon and Beef. It's hysterical.

But let's start from the beginning.

We got up early to go to the Farmer's Market at the St. Augustine Amphitheatre. It wasn't huge at all, but we got some beautiful long beans, green tomatoes, an avocado for guacamole, garlic-stuffed olives for our antipas tray for dinner and, surprisingly, a great gift for my Mom for Christmas.

Turtle was less than thrilled in the car, but he was great wandering around the booths in his stroller.

From there, it was off to breakfast and then Home Depot. DH decided that he wants to grow his own tomatoes. This turned into a marathon shopping trip where he got not only tomato plants, but seeds for green beans, basil, oregano and curly leaf parsley, a gorgeous pink and yellow hibiscus plant for me AND a replacement curtain rod for the kitchen.

Depsite the rain, he got to work, and before long, our back patio had been transformed into his own personal garden.

(From left to right: basil & parsley, two troughs of green beans, oregano)

(tomato plant hanging, herbs moved to table)

While he was working on that, I attacked the kitchen window situation. I had bought a rod a while back and hung it, but because of oddly placed studs in the wall, I could not get a middle bracket in and the thin rod had a horrible sway in the middle. I. Hated. It. Every day I saw it, it would annoy me. Even worse, I could not find a rod to replace it and had kind of given up hope. Well, finally, I found one in Home Depot that wasn't perfect, but would be faaarrrr better than what was there. Due to different bracket sizes, I was able to get this one in the middle and as you can see in the picture, we have a straight rod! Yay!

This morning, I attempted to help by moving our hibiscus to the front porch. I got some great photos of it and the flowering tree outside. I think the front of our house is really coming along (And we are clearly ready for football season!).

Finally, I went around back to water all the plants, and that's when it happened. The reason I hate nature and hate gardening: I was attacked. As I was innocently pouring water from my can into one of the umbrella plants, I realized the can felt heavier rather than lighter. I looked down, and found this horrendous thing staring back at me.

Of course, I shrieked and bolted inside to safety. DH was amazed at how I can methodically and coldly assassinate spiders the size of small children, but how a tree frog can send me screaming. ::Shudders:: I bet that thing has fangs. That's as close as I was willing to get for the sake of the photo, and he hopped off somewhere, but I'm not looking forward to future meetings.