Happy Easter!

While most of you were attending church services, hiding or hunting Easter eggs, or eating chocolate bunnies, I had a project to complete today. A neighbor gave me a bunch of bamboo for a hedge a couple of weeks ago, and I HAD to get them in the ground. Unlike Mikey, I didn't have anyone to take pictures of me working, so there are just pictures of the work...

When we moved into this place there was an oleander hedge between our house and the neighbor to the east... which thrilled me to no end (NOT!) as we had just finally finished killing and removing the oleander hedge from the old house right before we moved... in case you don't know, oleander is extremely poisonous so we didn't want the chance of even one leaf blowing into a horse pen! Especially since we have already experienced oleander poisoning once before, back when Lindsey's horse Thorn was Andria's horse, one of the kids forgot to chain a gate and our houdini Applejack opened it. Thorn was happily munching on the mulberry leaves and accidentally got a oleander leaf in with them! The vet said he must have spit it out as soon as he bit into it and tasted it, otherwise he would have died. As it was he was very sick for several days.

Anyway we shut off the automatic watering system to them and trimmed them way way back, and for the last couple of years the dead stumps have been sitting there waiting for me to figure out what I was going to put there instead. After all, no sense in digging them up if I wasn't ready to re-plant something, otherwise the holes would fill in and would have to be dug again. Or, it just might have been an excuse to avoid digging them up for a while...

Well it's hard to see in the picture but I started by digging out the dead oleander stumps, plus digging additional holes in between as they were spaced too far apart for the bamboo as they don't grow as thick.

My companions for the day...
About the time I got real tired and was ready to quit, I turned around to see how many were left... OMG I'm only HALF DONE!
This one was a real booger... Alex ended up digging on it for a bit, then moved on to a few more and got them out for me, since he sent me inside to discuss with Randy a potential trip to the in-laws in town for Easter dinner. I said I would go ONLY if we didn't stay long (yeah right...) and if Randy promised to help me finish when we got back... and Randy actually did finish digging this out after we got back from town. So don't feel TOO sorry for me, I did get yummy ham and scalloped potatoes for dinner! (And a helper for the rest of the project!)
Randy pounding a fence stake.
The fence is to keep the dogs from digging the bamboo up like they did the first few I planted a couple of weeks ago.
I had the bright idea of digging a chanel between each of the holes, the plan being to turn the hose on low and leave it until the water had flowed to each of the plants down the row... Randy pointed out that there was a high spot so instead of putting the hose at one end, we put it partway down the row. Other than that my idea worked real well!
Ta Da!!! All done...
Notice the last two pictures were taken in the dark... we BARELY got finished, ended up putting tools away in the dark, but it IS done!! Whew, I'm tired...