On the left: what I ordered, from the website. On the right: what Pam received.

For Pam’s 50th birthday today, I decided to send her some flowers. So I got on the Lopshire Flowers website, picked out a nice basket, and had it sent.

When Pam received it, she sent me a thank you along with a photo. A photo which I then compared to the photo on the website of what I thought I had ordered. Looks like they at least used the same flowers. Just not very many of them.

Before (top) and after.

I left town Thursday morning (June 10) to meet with a web designer in Dayton, Ohio (3 hours away). When I came back, a new house awaited me. Sort of.

The area directly in front of our house was a mess, and has been ever since we moved in 17 years ago. We’ve done lots of landscaping; nearly every bush and tree on the property was planted by us; the only remnants of the previous owners was one tree in front, one in back, and three bushes in that jungle in front of our house.

When it comes to this front jungle area, we just haven’t had any great ideas. Pam and I didn’t inherit any landscaping genes.

We’d done some work here, mainly to tear out creepy-crawly stuff we detested and plant a few new bushes, but we never liked it. A bunch of bulbs had been planted by the previous owners, and no matter what we did, they kept coming up. Bulbs from Hell can’t be killed.

I had planned to tackle it this area this spring, but two surgeries pretty much killed that idea. Which was fine.

We decided to just hire someone to make it look nice. Let professionals do it.

LawnsPlus came in yesterday morning at 9 a.m., a couple hours after I had left. They worked real fast. By the time I returned around 3:30, they were mostly cleaning up.

The place looked great. The jungle in front of our house had been dug out and totally redone. We can now see parts of the house we’ve never seen before.

They actually worked all around the house, front and back.

They planted new bushes, trimmed nearly every bush on the property, mulched everything. A front corner of the house was extended out, and new bushes planted. The huge burning bush in front of our house was transplanted to the back of our property.

One of the few plants remaining from the previous owners was a crabapple tree in the front yard. What were they thinking? I hated that tree. It was terribly difficult to mow around, and grew in a haphazard way. So we had them dig out the crabapple tree and, in a different place in the front yard, plant a new tree. A serious improvement.

Pam has always wanted to do something around the light post. Before, it was just a bare black post stuck in the ground. Now there are plants and mulch around it.

So as of yesterday, we have a brand new yard to enjoy. And this morning, a big thunderstorm came through to soak everything well and help those new plants along. Perfect.

(I put a gallery of before-and-after photos on Facebook.)

One of my snowblower tires was flat, and I couldn’t get it to inflate. So what to do?

Take it to Dad, of course. Because he can fix anything. That’s what I did a couple nights ago.

Tonight, after practice, I called Dad.

“Wondering if we can stop by to get the tire, since they say snow’s coming tomorrow.”

“Or, you could look in your garage,” Dad said.

He had fixed the tire, then dropped by today and put it back on the snowblower. Ready to go.

That’s one awesome Dad. Which I’ve known for a long, long time.