Halloween 2011

As much as I tried - I couldn't get out of "trick or treating". We had so many birthday/Halloween parties this past week/weekend I was DONE. But alas, they squeezed one more outing out of us.

The girls went to one house and Cat asked..."Do you think that lady was naturally that scary looking or was she pretending?"

Pirate & Cleopatra

"Argh"
And...a costume change.

The Harvest

We've got pecans!

They aren't very big - so they're pretty "high maintenance" to shell. It was still fun gathering them. It was like being on an Easter egg hunt.

The Fountain

Back in July, we started working on the landscaping in the front of the house. It started out as an over grown mess.

Got it all cleaned up. Removed all of the Asiatic Jasmine ground cover and planted some grass seed.

I've been stalking a fountain out at the local greenhouse for about a year. - Trying to decide if I wanted to just buy the fountain that they had in stock or special order one that is stained to my liking. In the end, I opted to buy the one in stock because there was a $200 price difference if I went with "made to order" AND it wasn't a guarantee that it would turn out the shade of my choice.

So we took the plunge and set out to bring my fountain home! The hubby and the nursery guy were able to load everything into the vehicle but getting it out was going to be a whole other issue. Luckily, we were able to just drive up into the yard and back up in between the trees and flower bed and over our little levee.

The levee is only a few feet high. It's an original slave built levee probably constructed in the early 20's to keep the flood waters of the Mississippi River away. I'm not sure if it was built before or after The Great Flood of 1927 but I DO know that our house was built on the wrong side of it!

The trunk was the perfect height to just slide out the base tier. - Otherwise, we'd be chauffeuring this thing around until we could find some more muscle!

We've gotten a few grass sprigs. We'll hold out until the Spring. If we're still not having any luck, we'll just sod the spot. I'm anxious for the fountain to start to patina. I've done a little research on how to "age" it. Suggestions range from rubbing it with manure to painting it with a mixture of buttermilk, yogurt and moss seed.