Two Bees Hive

Aunt Patsy found this wonderful tree version of a Ligustrum sitting on the curb along her walk one day. It had a note that it was free. So, she took it home and asked if we wanted it. Sure! I love free things.  Cassie and I had just been talking about how we wanted to plant something on the back side of the house to eventually help shade that side of the house. This ligustrum that has been pruned to be a tree is perfect. It already had good height and will grow quickly to a nice lush green canopy that is nearly at the top level of the windows.  New growth!

Mom and dad gifted us this wonderful Chinese Pistache. Though not native to Texas, they do well in the Texas weather and is a medium to fast growing tree. I like naming my trees so I named this one Mo-stache Pistache. When you say the name you have to make the motion of twirling your mustache. It just makes it more fun! Mo, for short, is doing well. I cant wait for the beautiful fall red and orange colors, he will look so great in our yard! If you want to read more about the Chinese Pistache, here is a link to the Texas A&M site .

Lesson learned: not everything you see on Pinterest is as easy as they say. We wanted, or maybe just I wanted, a pathway to the firepit. I don't really like having grass poke my feet when I have flipflops on, which I wear all the time. We talked about different options, limestone pavers, gravel, mulch....and then we decided a wood path would be good. We already have quite a bit of limestone from all the free limestone we got for the other projects so we thought a darker, different texture would be good. I searched Pinterst for different pallet ideas and found some great pathway ideas. I then searched for free pallets. Which are pretty easy to find but they aren't always in good condition and my car isn't big enough to carry pallets....or is it? I got a friend to help me get a few pallets and worked several days to pry them apart. This process is also not as easy as the internet says. I don't care what kind pallet you have, they are all a challenge to get

My aunt asked if I was interested in getting some free rock from a work site. I am always interested in free stuff! And this limestone was perfect for edging! Between the two of us we got just about enough to make this planter 2 stones high. I had to go back and get a few more pieces to finish it off. After I had to all together I decided they needed to be a little more secure so I bought some landscape adhesive and glued the top to the bottom layer. Now we are ready for planting some veggies!

Compost bin made from 2 pallets.  I wanted a compost bin but didn't want to spend a lot of money. My past inexpensive compost bin didn't look good and it was made of materials that made if difficult for me to actually get to the compost. I saw a few blogs and videos on making a compost bin from pallets. There are several ways to do this, I chose the method that uses only 2 pallets so it was low enough that I could get to the compost, there is another version that uses 4 pallets but for my size, this makes the bin too tall.  Now, where to get pallets...... Amazingly, there are free pallets just about everywhere. Look near any dumpster and you can usually find a few pallets. A friend helped me load these two pallets and bring them back to The Hive.  I bought a hand saw, long zip ties, and screws. The saw was the most expensive part. I cut the pallets in half an zip tied them together to get an idea of how it was going to look. I leveled it out with a few bricks.