Green Thumb and a Big Red Blister

I wish I had had the forethought to take a before picture of my yard. Words cannot explain just how awful my yard really is/was. I've had multiple lawn care companies stop by to offer my estimates on what it would take to get rid of the weeds, and try and grow some grass. One estimate was that my yard is 80% weeds, 10% grass, and 10% dead. I've spent countless hours pulling weeds, spraying weedkiller, etc.

Here's the best picture I have of the yard. Please note the lack of lush green grass growing freely.

Okay, I have to admit it. I'm amazed by weedkiller. How it can kill just the weeds and not the grass is really cool. Sadly, at the same time, my yard is/was so full of weeds that now instead of being a big scary green weed field, it's a dead yellow and brown weed field.

My landlord said I can buy whatever I want for the yard and take it out of my rent. So I went a little crazy buying flowers and bushes for the yard. Particularly, I bought a lot of flowers for the front garden area. Here's what they looked like all nice and innocent at the store. Little did they know what their future held. Maybe they would have had the common sense to not look so pretty on the shelves if they had known I was coming to send them to an earthy grave.

And here's my little front garden plot. This is the part that it is unfortunate I didn't take a picture of first. The weeds were a good 12 inches high, and filled the entire plot. It took me several hours over several nights to pull all the weeds. Let's jut say I never ever want to do that again. But here's what it looked like before I actually put the flowers in. Please note, it doesn't look like fertile land. (I really miss Virginia.)

And here you have the garden plot after three hours of digging and planting. I have to admit, it was a little bit fun. I'm sore in all sorts of new ways. I have a genuine "redneck" sunburn, and a blister like you have never seen before in the middle of my right palm (making driving stick rather painful).

That would be about 30 different flowers in there. I'm most excited about the shasta daisies. (I LOVE DAISIES!!)  There's an azalea bush, marigolds, peonies, begonias, pansies, dia-synth-something-or-whatever, another breed of daisies, and some other pretty pink flowering bush thing. I have no doubt that I planted it all way too close together.

On the side of the house (not pictured) there are 2 boxwood bushes, a rose bush, strawberries, another azalea bush, and a tomato plant. 

And here is the sad part. In spite of doing everything I knew to do, and reading the instructions, and only disobeying the too close together rule, a lot of them are dead already. I can't believe I managed to kill $100 worth of flowers in under 24 hours. Who does that?? Seriously?? How is it even possible that they managed to live in little plastic containers, but I take them out, put them in the ground and water them and they DIE??

Tomorrow we're expecting lots of sun and heat here in Utah, so I'm hoping maybe my flowers will want to come back to life. Its possible, right????

Oh and then there was another Real Salt Lake game. So Little and I went (OBVIOUSLY) to watch our boys lose. Again. But we've already forgiven them and were ready for the next home game.