Thin Is Not In

As you saw from reading here, you know that we've been on a mission to create a larger seating area in front of our house. We visualized what we wanted so we photo-shopped a rough idea of it to give us a guide of sorts:

Not necessarily those specific flowers, wicker furniture or window boxes...but you get the idea.  Oh, and that pile of dirt on the left is to be overlooked. It wasn't quite part of our photo shop-vision lol. Anyway, to get to something similar to this, it required a lot of work.

We had to pickup the paver stones that were previously laid down. We had to churn the dirt which was so hard given that it was full of clay! We also had to level out the ground where it dips down a bit:

After getting the ground leveled, we went to Oakland Nursery to purchase some soil, weed prevention stuff and some of the baby globe arborvitae bushes just to see how they'd look. 

Yea, pretty wimpy. Not quite what we had in mind, but I guess they'll have to do! Even if they are all small and stupid looking. We didn't purchase them all because we weren't quite sure how many we'd need. The next week we went to a different branch since we were on that side of town and purchased more bushes! Hey, wait a minute...this store has much cheaper bushes! And they're bigger!!!

Here is a better comparison:

With this comparison I'm thinking you have got to be kidding me. Isn't that a shame? Who knew that if you just happened to be at another store that there would be such a difference. There is however another shame that I must confess to. For the week that we had the underfed, skinny bushes...we kind of denied them water. It wasn't out of spite and anger of their thinness, it was mainly because we just dropped the ball, but hey, in our defense it did rain a couple days. 

That lack of watering effort did not go unnoticed when we returned the malnourished globe babies. The helpful man in the gardening section who helped take the overpriced little globes out of the car said "what happened to them?" We honestly hoped that nobody would notice the dried out withering wafer thin plants. Our response, " you overpriced those skinny little suckers so we're better dealing them for new better chubby bushes! And to get you back for such retail abuse we denied them food and water just to give you a taste of your own medicine!" We said with fire in our eyes. Oh, but we did let them know that God provided them rain to save their lives. 

Ok, ok... it didn't quite happen that way. Though he did ask why they looked dry, and we responded that though we did water them, we missed a day or so. We told him that we were permitted to return them since we found a better deal. He then said, no problem they bounce right back anyway! As we drove away and headed over to get our healthy, green, well fed, cheaper new bushes I thought to myself, hopefully those skinny barely bushy souls find a nice home where thin is in.

Tatum