So I'm CHEAP!!

Last May, for Mother's Day and my birthday, I wanted to make our yard look nice. So we made a BIG trip to Home Depot, spent a LOT of money, and then made our muscles ache by digging, raking, planting, etc. We were careful to choose plants that worked for our zone...the ARCTIC ZONE. Those poor plants struggled all summer long. They looked pretty much dead at one point. We slowly nursed them back to life...if you want to call it that. Each plant sprouted at least one new leaf on their dead brown stickly bodies, so we called them "live".

Well...it's sort of spring again, or at least the calendar says it is. Let's just forget the blizzard we had on Friday. Those plants were officially dead. We were looking at our receipts, and in a few days, it would be a year since we bought them. And hey...they were guaranteed for a year. THEY WERE!!!!! So yesterday morning, when the snow had mostly melted, I sent Chris out to dig up the dead plants. We made another BIG trip to Home Depot. This time, we carted in 6 very dead plants. As we got near the "RETURNS" counter, Chris and the kids started to walk the other direction. Yours truly was, of course, pushing the cart with the dead plants. I turned to Chris and said, "OH NO YOU DON'T! YOU GET OVER HERE!" There was no way I was going to keep that embarrassment all to myself. But as I got busy explaining myself to the guy at the register, my family quietly slinked away. The young register guy with grommets for earrings was NOT amused! But how could he argue...the guarantee was for a full year, and the year wouldn't be up until later this week.

As I walked away with my $127 gift card, a man in line even complimented me on my gardening skills. I thought that was nice.

We didn't leave empty handed. I mean...what a deal! If the plants die, we'll just get fresh ones again next year.

We got some Honeysuckle (mmmmmm....it smells SO nice),



a couple of Lilacs,



and some Sand Cherries.



We even had some survivors (Lilies) from last year.



Yep...you might say we're quite the gardeners.