Supermom Chronicles

The weather was just fantastic today. The high barely reached 80 degrees...in the first week of FEBRUARY!! As long as I can remember, February seemed to always bring the coldest temps of the year. It seems like the few times we got snow/sleet/frost growing up was always during the month of February. Today, though, it felt like spring had sprung.

We spent a lot of the day outdoors with the kids. The spring-like weather got us dreaming about landscaping...flowers and trees and water features, oh my! We couldn't resist, so we started measuring and marking the backyard. By 10am we were at a great nursery in southwest Austin, It's About Thyme, and found all we wanted and more. They have a fantastic selection. Kurt, the guy that helped us, just happened to be the expert there in water features. That is a particular weakness for John & I. He showed us several of his creations. He said he also holds classes once monthly for the do-it-yourselfers, which probably includes us. We would like to do a lot of our own labor, but coordinating around the schedule of 3 little ones is the big challenge. Anyway, we purchased 3 trees: a Monterey Oak (fast growing shade tree for the southwest side of our house), a Shantung maple and a 4-in-1 apple tree, both for the backyard. The apple tree is actually 4 species of apples grafted together, each with 1-2 branches that will produce each variety...I can't wait!! Kurt got me so excited about fruit trees that I think we're going to add peach and plum trees to the lineup. John is going tomorrow to pick them all up. Unfortunately, I have to work the rest of the week. John is going to try to have them all in the ground by the time I get home tomorrow.

Now that we've started on trees, I can't help but start dreaming about the stone pathway, the water features, the flower garden in the back corner....