MitchandDonna.com

One of my favorite aspects of a garden blog is being able to see the difference in my garden from season to season.

I haven’t posted about my garden since last fall, and I have three seasons worth of pictures to share. I’m absolutely amazed by the changes in my garden, especially in my front flower bed.

I’ve tried all kinds of plants in my front flower bed. This is the bed where I typically plant annuals because it’s small and easy to maintain. Last year, it looked fabulous in the spring. It was full of snapdragons, pansies, violas, nasturtium, calendula, and dianthus. See my previous posts for pictures.

This fall, I decided to hold off on the annuals and to plant hardy perennials instead. Why? Mostly because of lack of time. My full-time job keeps me busy enough. Another reason was to make sure that by the summer, I only had Texas-tough plants in the bed (to avoid the disaster that happened last summer.)

Also, I wanted to spend most of my gardening time on planting trees in front of my house. Tree planting can take a full weekend, by the way. I’ll post more on that experience later. For now, here’s what my front flower bed looked like during Fall 2006 (around October):

The only plants that made it through the summer
were the purple heart (center), the katie ruellias (around the edge), the dianthus (lower left), and the daylily (center–under purple hearts.)

I planted a few Turk’s caps in October, Read the rest of this entry »

Mitch and I took a trip up north a couple of weekends ago to visit his sister and her family. It’s obvious by the photos I took during the trip that Mitch and I are head over heels in love with our nieces. Here’s why:

www.flickr.com Mitch & Donna’s 2007 April photoset

Mitch played reverend again this weekend to marry one of his rugby buddies, Jack, and Jack’s new partner in mischief, Krystina. They were married at Lake Travis on one of the coldest April days in Austin’s history. It actually snowed as the bride was walking down the aisle! Lucky for her (and the rest of us), the wedding was indoors. It was a beautiful wedding, and I’m glad that I was able to paticipate in the fun.

To see some photos of the event, check out our Flickr site:

www.flickr.com Mitch & Donna’s Rugby Weddings photoset

Look what Mitch did:



I’ll take some credit too, but honestly, our new front walkway was a project started and finished by Mitch.

He started the walkway during the last week of 2006 when he had a week of vacation. We both wanted to replace our cement walkway because it was badly cracked. Also, it had shifted in such a way that water flowed toward the house when it rained. Because we scored some thick stone rocks from our generous friend Stacey (thanks, chica!!), we decided to replace the front walkway and to add a walkway from the front porch to the Read the rest of this entry »

For those of you who haven’t heard, Mitch’s father, Jerry, passed away on January 14, 2007. He is greatly missed.

The picture above is Jerry and Mitch in 1972. When I first saw it, I thought the grown man was Mitch. Over the years I have learned that Mitch and his father share several things in common besides looks. They also share a love of adventure, laughter, wit, and Sooner football. They both have large social networks, but they both also enjoy their introspective moments. They share a patience for figuring out how things work. They both like to dream big, and they motivate others to dream with them. They’re certainly both stubborn, but this quality also comes across in their loyalty–especially to the ones they love. For all these reasons I express my profound thanks to Jerry for giving Mitch the opportunity to love and admire who he was and who he continues to be–in spirit and in memory.