Congrats! Looks like my favorite golfer is engaged. https://www.instagram.com/p/BdHJoCjlZzZ/?tagged=jordanspieth
updated:
What’s blooming Wednesday and where have I been since I last posted?
Happy March my sweet peeps!
A lot has happened since I last posted. We FLOODED!! Our house, aka our home sweet home of nearly 2o years, the very home we raised our two children in, flooded during the ‘great flood’ of 2016!!
To this very moment it is hard to believe our HOME flooded!! Twenty-seven inches of water inside our home for days!! It is all still a blur….a complete heartbreak!!
During our twenty years of living in our neighborhood, we were one of the first three families to move into the new development/subdivision, we NEVER had water in our streets. When we first purchased our home we were zoned for flood and had to have flood insurance, but ten or so years later we were rezoned and no longer had to purchase flood insurance. Many of my long time neighbors cancelled their flood insurance. The heartbreak that would follow was nearly too much to bear.
Our neighbor’s house at the entrance of our neighborhood. 😦 This picture was taken days after we were allowed to wade through knee deep water to get to our houses, to access the damage and to deal with the heartbreaking cleanup of the lost that would follow.
This same scene would play out over and over, day in and day out. All day, a bumper to bumper line of cars and trucks in our neighborhood.
The water line on our house!! 25-27 inches of flood water. The heartbreak that follows…the cleanup. The back breaking, gut wrenching, heart breaking cleanup.
The HOT, HUMID, and the barfing smell of the cleanup. 
My sweet hubby!! He was a rock during the ENTIRE process of the flood. From the night the water came in and took over the house until this very day. So many stories I want to share with you my sweet peeps.
Our trash pile was growing daily, it was now taller than a refrigerator.
And then the blessings, so many blessings…the following pictures are just a few…..
Gibbs Construction out of New Orleans Louisiana passed out cases of water and protein bars to the masses. Their employees would carry the items into our flooded houses. Such a huge blessing for bone weary homeowners. Bless you Gibbs Construction!!
Mobile Mini container storage. When others only had a recording when you called, Mobile Mini answered the phone with the kindest of service and made all the arrangements so painless. What a huge blessing during a time of need. Thank you Mobile Mini!!
And finally for this….I called it the ‘claw’. I was so thankful to have the claw pick up our flood ruined possessions that I cried from the visual relief of them hauling it off. Out of sight, but not out of mind. The beginning of the healing process was in the works for me but the tears and heartache would continue….
Hubby and I have spent our 20 year wedding anniversary in our flooded house and my 52nd birthday, my nest became officially empty when our last little college birdie moved out. Halloween for the neighborhood was cancelled and for Thanksgiving we spent the night and day at my ‘flood bestie’s’ new to her home, because she lost her previous home to the flood. This stay at her new home was a well needed blessing. Christmas Eve and Christmas day we spent in our flooded house. We made plans to meet up with our kiddos for our Christmas. What joy and a blessing to have two great kiddos. They didn’t mind the flood house mess and my attempt at putting up our tree. 
I felt like my tree looked, wore out and exhausted. I only had a few set of lights that made it through the flood. But oh how they cheered me up each day until well after New Year’s. The tree might still be up today if it had not been for my hubby removing my kitchen floors. 😦
Hubby and I would spend NYE and New Year Day in our flood house. We decided to stay home and enjoy a low key kind of eve and day. We used the time to think about and plan for the New Year. We chose not to eat our traditional southern New Year Day kind of meal, and the lack of a kitchen and oven made the decision so much easier. We continued to spend the holidays in our flood house, including Valentine’s day and most recently my Mardi Gras school holidays. It has been the best medicine, and perfectly time since I just recently had the flu.
Through it all Mark and I have been so blessed by so many; family, friends (both real life and social media), coworkers, employers, churches, neighbors and my students and their parents. I am so blessed.
So, as I sit in my lawn chair at a folded table in my office to write this post, I think of a new season.
A season of new beginnings….Spring!!
Thank you for stopping by and are you excited about a new season? Hello Spring!!
Back to school for me tomorrow, so I hope to see you soon. Come on Friday!! This flood baby has some painting to do.
I would love to hear from you so be sure to stop by my instagram https://www.instagram.com/diggingwithdana/?hl=en and my facebook page https://www.facebook.com/Digging-with-Dana-1539730139605913/
keep digging,
Dana
Monday Management-A hot and humid weedy mess!!
Dare I post the pictures I have taken of our hot mess? Excuse me…correction…hot MESSES!!
The hubs and I live in the southeastern part of the USDA Plant Hardiness Map Zone 8b, where in the month of July it is HOT and HUMID nearly the ENTIRE day AND night. The type of days where you hear locust sounds during the day and frogs croaking at night!! Seems daily we have thunderstorms, which the weeds and mosquitoes just LOVE!! The hubby and I have to admit, after a long work day, we are very appreciative of a good shower or two. Another benefit…. free water!! But my goodness the weeds!! lol
My management plan? NO GARDENING IN JULY!!! That’s right!! Let’s just lay landscaping fabric over our garden beds and take the entire month of July off!! Now if I could only get my hubby on board with my plan. Fat chance!!
Are you ready to see our hot messes? I promise you, things will look better, so please stop by often to checkout our improvements.
Let us start with our front yard. It was past time to trim these..our Plum Delights.
Front yard in July. On the left: Azaleas On the right: Plum Delights
Can you see the ‘honey do’ list a brewing?! I trim the shrubs and the hubs pressure washes the sidewalk and front porch, but hubby’s items are on hold for the moment. Fingers crossed, I can mark them off our list…soon!!
I know I shouldn’t prune my Azaleas in July if I want good looking blooms in spring, but these guys are marked for relocation.
Azaleas in July
Aztec Grass and ‘Plum Delights’ (Loropetalum)
mailbox flowerbed need to redo
Mailbox flowerbed So ready to redo this bed.
Pruning and weeding needed here too!!
River Birch leaves in July
Oh by the way, as I draft out this post (Sunday afternoon)…wait for it ….RAINING!!
Sweet Sunday Thunderstorm
Okay back to real hot mess. Let us go around to our backyard veggie garden. Ready?
I can not believe I am posting these pictures!! Solution…. just post the pretty pics, but I want to keep it real!! lol I want to look back at this post and see what the hubby and I had going on in July 2016!!
(insert the sound of distant thunder from the pasting thunderstorm)
Back view of veggie garden
‘Crepe Myrtle’ veggie bed
Wild blackberry vine loves the rain too!!
Weedy and shady veggie bed with a dying squash plant
Can you find my green onions among all the nutsedge?
super weedy cucumber bed
tomato bed in July
Well sweet peeps that pretty much sums up our veggie garden in July. Before I know it I will be back at school teaching a wonderful new group of students, so I better continue to work on my management plans in hopes to be more productive with my time.
I am looking forward to seeing you more often and please feel free to stop by our facebook page and post pics of your gardens and blog links.
https://www.facebook.com/Digging-with-Dana-1539730139605913/
Keep digging!!
Dana
Monday Management: Meals and Garden
Happy first day of Summer sweet peeps!! Hope y’all had a wonderful Father’s Day weekend. We had a much needed, low-key, recharging kind of weekend.
Total garden geeks!! Fruit trees in the back seat!!
The hubby and I used some of our weekend time to discuss our meals and the productivity of our garden. What spearheaded this discussion? My hubby’s cooking!!! He cooked the best boiled shrimp, potatoes and corn. Delish!! No big deal some people might say…..but it was HIS CORN that made it a big deal!!! Yes, finally after three seasons of trying different locations and such, my husband was successful enough to boil a few cobs of corn!! It was so cool to pick the corn straight from the stalk, which is located right in our backyard!! Grant it, it wasn’t this massive load of corn but it was just enough to boil for us, which made for an ‘oh soooo cool’ kind of an experience!!! Can you tell we are total garden geeks?! lol
When the meal was done it had us thinking about other meals and the productivity of our small backyard garden. With both meals and garden in mind we started to develop a plan according to the direction we wanted to follow. Our plans are along the lines of the farm to table concept, only the farm would be our backyard veggie garden. So with that concept in our minds and our menus, we will try to produce another crop of corn before our first frost here in Zone 8b. Will we be successful? Not sure, but check back often for I plan to post both our successes and failures, as to improve our garden productivity and the freshness of our meals.
Keep up the digging!!
Dana
Digging with Dana on Facebook
Good Morning yall! I wanted to take a quick minute to let yall know Digging with Dana has a Facebook page that I would like to share with you.
https://www.facebook.com/Digging-with-Dana-1539730139605913/?ref=tn_tnmn
I would love to have you stop by and check out my page. If you have a Facebook page for your blog, please share so I can like your page and follow your posts.
Best Wishes for a great Tuesday and see ya soon 🙂
Dana
Tuesday’s Tiny Garden Tour
Good Morning and hope everyone enjoyed their holiday weekend. It felt great to finally have some down time from school. I always look forward to spending the holiday time with my hubby and our two college kiddos.
I have waited a very long time to be free to weed our garden but all the weather seems to do lately is RAIN!! Huge and heavy downpours. Day and night…rain and more rain. We are so waterlogged and the weeds are loving every minute of it. lol
Our waterlogged back patio
Our waterlogged veggie garden
This morning I was thankful for the cooler temperatures and decided to seize the moment to weed our lettuce bed. I am determined to weed until it rains, that is if my back can hold out. LOL
Our lettuce bed has blotted and it is time to plant something else in it’s place.
Making progress with my weeding of the lettuce bed
I have enjoyed spending my brunch time with you and look forward to posting again tomorrow.
Best Wishes my sweet gardening peeps and as always, thanks for stopping by for a quick visit.
Dana
Sweet Summer Sunday Week One Day One
Good Morning my sweet gardening peeps. I am delighted to start my Sweet Sunday with you. I took a few quick pics to share with you and hope that yall are enjoying your holiday weekend as well. It is finally official, I am out of school for the summer!!! 🙂
Happy Happy Joy JOy!!
Our little family doesn’t have any big vacation plans for this summer but we are looking forward to spending the summer at home as a stay-cay. Nothing fancy, just enjoying the company of our family and friends.
Our first season patio potted lemon tree.
our first cucumbers of the summer season
zone 8 backyard potted potatoes
patio potted satsuma tree
Best wishes sweet gardening peeps and hope to see you again tomorrow.
Thanks for stopping by and I would love to hear how you plan to spend your summer.
Dana
Tuesday’s 3 Things to do in my garden this week
Good Morning sweet gardening peeps. I wanted to stop by with a quick post before I am out the door for my day job as a science teacher. Hard to believe in just a few short weeks I will be out for the summer. My fearless and spontaneous hubby is home alone and goodness he has been ‘cutting up’…lumber that is!! I need to remind him to take pics of his project. LOL
3 Things I want to do this week in our veggie garden:
1. plant my homemade sweet potato slips
2. Deadhead my green onions and save some of the seeds for family and friends.
3. Find an organic solution for controlling slugs
And I am trying to figure out what I will use as my ‘tall’ plant in my pots on my front porch
Best Wishes sweet peeps for a wonderful Tuesday and hope to see you again tomorrow to give you an update on Wednesday’s watering and weeding 🙂
Thank you for your supportive comments and suggestions.
Dana
Sweet Sweet Saturday!! Weeding and Seeding
Good morning sweet gardening peeps. I am so excited to be off today and I plan to send nearly every daylight minute outside 🙂 Happy Happy JOy Joy!!
I popped in on my neighbor to say good morning and on my way back down my driveway I spotted these beauties!! 
I simply adore gardenias!! They remind me of my wonderful summers spent with my cousins at our grandparents’ home.
Headed back outside to tackle this bed of weeds before the sun heats things up
and when that happens, I will be working in the shade.
Hope you are digging your Saturday too. Would love to hear from you when you get a chance.
Best wishes
Dana
Weeding, Watering and What have we been up to Wednesday
Good morning my sweet gardening peeps 🙂 I hope all is well in your neck of the woods. School has been keeping me super busy but I am over the moon excited about our pending summer vacation!!! Happy Happy Joy Joy because I know I will be spending nearly every waking moment outside enjoying our backyard veggie garden and we have hopes of touring other nearby gardens with some of our family and friends.
Watering on Wednesdays reminds me to water all of our potted plants on our front porch.
We have had tons and tons of rain lately so all of our back patio potted plants are good to grow and grow, including the weeds. lol I forgot to take a picture of our newly planted patio potted lemon tree, which by the way now has tons of weeds growing underneath the tree.
Weeding and more weeding will need to be done…and very soon. Our weeds just love all of the rain and our busy work schedules. lol Our weeding list is never ending but it doesn’t bother me much at all. Weeds will be weeds and if I can get to them before they seed I call it a victory for me. 🙂
What have we been up to lately? Working, working and more working. lol The hubs has used his spare time to work in the garden and I have been working to wrap things up for the end of our school year. It’s been bittersweet at times for me, so excited to wrap this school year up but then I know I will surely miss my (school) kiddos. It’s always nice to have the summer holiday to reconnect with my loving family, good friends and nature, which never fails to re-energize me mentally and physically for the greater good of all who comes in contact with me, including myself. lol 🙂
I hope to work on another blog post for tomorrow. April’s end of the month Garden tour. Here’s a peek at our cutie…first one of the 2015 season
Now the question is…..Hubby’s or (shhhhh) the birds’?
I will be digging some afternoon golf on TV today and looking forward to seeing you again real soon.
Best wishes as always for a wonderful gardening day 🙂
Dana
digging with Dana 