The Adventures of Us: Greenhouse Trip

This past weekend we went to the Greenhouse (one of my favourite places. It was a great way to spend part of my Mother's Day weekend). The main reason for our trip was to return a dead tree and find another tree to replace it (this will be our third one). Third times a charm ... right? We are keeping our fingers crossed that this will be true for our third time trying to plant a tree in our backyard. For the past two years, every time we have planted a tree in our backyard it dies {insert extremely sad face}. We don't know what it is with our backyard and trees but they just don't seem to want to co-operate with each other. The soil at our place is very clayey and we think that is the issue. My flower beds and our veggie garden do great each year, but I can't say the same about our trees in the back. The ones in the front are also doing great.

What tree to pick ...

As a housewarming gift from some of our Dutch relatives we were given a gift card to a greenhouse that is about 30 minutes away. We decided to use the gift card to purchase our first tree two years ago. The Greenhouse offers a 2 year extended warranty if you purchase their plant starter fertiliser so we figured what the heck we will grab it and also use it when we plant my flower beds. Not thinking we would need to return the tree the following year. Now here we are two years later and we had to return yet another tree. This time however, we were lucky. Normally they only allow you to go back and return only one tree. Lucky for us, the person last year stamped our receipt with the Two Year Warranty Stamp, so they returned it without much difficulty. I do not think we will be able to return our new tree if it also dies, which is kind of annoying since they cost over $100.00 plus tax a tree. Hopefully our new tree will take. If it does not, I think I might just cry and give up.

Last year we picked a Red Maple. This year we decided to try a River Birch. We shall see how it likes our backyard. The weather on Saturday was perfect for planting the tree. Sunday on the other hand was not the greatest. We woke up to a high of 1^oC and it snowed throughout the day and was cold, windy and grey. I am glad we were able to deal with the tree on Saturday.

This year we dug the hole a lot bigger, deeper and mixed sand with nine 20L bags of topsoil. If that does not do the trick, we do not know what will.

The one good thing about all of this planting the tree and returning the tree and so on .... is that I get to go to the Greenhouse. I think I could spend a whole day at that place!

I just love looking around at all the beautiful flowers and the abundance of gorgeous colours. So many different colours of petunias. The Pink and Yellow Azalea's were just so pretty.

The Hydrangea were gorgeous. They are one of my favourite flowers, especially the blue ones. They even had a Fairy Garden.

Since we were at the Greenhouse I grabbed my herbs - Parsley, Cilantro (Coriander), Basil, Oregano, and for the first time some Cumin. My Chives survived the winter this year.