Finishing Touches, Furniture Move, and Flooding

Between all of the rain showers, I was finally able to finish up the garden in the front yard!  I only had to purchase a few new plants thanks to my mom and dad's amazing perennial garden and a generous neighbor from across the sidewalk. 

The only tricky part of the project was deciding how to fill the black metal plant stands (again, given to me by a neighbor in our old neighborhood).  They are basically metal baskets with wide openings on top of a metal stand, making it impossible to just fill them with soil -- the soil would just fall right out.  So, after some thought, I decided to buy some burlap and cut several layers to fit inside each basket to hold the soil.  I then planted some annuals inside each basket. 

The plants in the metal plant stands are a little flat from all the rain.  But, I'm hoping they will pop back up once the sun comes out again.  And, the plants in the garden are difficult to see in the photos since they are all small perennials that will need a couple years of growing before they are full-size.

Thankfully, I finished the front garden a day before the majority of the rain and thunderstorms hit our area.  But, the rain actually gave my husband and I a good opportunity to rearrange some furniture in our house that had been in the plans for a couple weeks. 

I was super excited when we moved into this townhouse because it had an actual dining room right off of the kitchen.  Our old townhouse only had a living room/dining room together.  However, after living here for about 6 months, I became aggravated with the fact that our dining room was only large enough to hold our family plus 2 guests for dinner. 

My solution to this problem was to move the dining room table into one side of our living room -- where Froggy Boot's play kitchen, table and chairs, and toy shelf were located.  This would give us plenty of room to put both leaves in the table and also have more than 2 people over for dinner. 

So, with it raining and thundering outside, we moved the dining room table and chairs into the living room -- which required taking the table apart.  While I had the chance, I went ahead and mopped the dining room floor really well.  Then, we moved Froggy Boot's kitchen, table and chairs, toy bench, and my small desk out of the living room and into the dining room.  It works out really well.  When I am in the kitchen, Froggy Boots can play in her kitchen right next to me! 

Then, I also took the opportunity to mop Froggy Boot's old play area really well before we set up the table and chairs in it's place.  Now, all we need is some pictures for the wall and I think the room will be complete!

Like I mentioned earlier, it was raining during the furniture move.  Well, it rained a little more than usual, causing some major flooding in our back yard.  I was not able to get a good picture of the flooding because it literally came right up to the back of our house and I couldn't get it all in the picture without going outside in the rain. 

With all of this additional rain, we had a couple minor leaks in our basement.  Fortunately, since we live in a co-op, we do not have to worry about any of the maintenance of the townhouse itself.  So, my husband called up to the office and they sent out one of the friendly maintenance men the next morning. 

After looking at the leaks, the maintenance man called a basement sealing company to come and fix the problem.  They will be coming next week to squirt some kind of something into the walls to stop the leaks. Don't ask me what that something is that they squirt into the walls -- it doesn't matter to me what it is as long as it works!

One last addition I made to the back yard last week was a small red bud tree.  It's a baby tree from the red bud tree my parents have in their yard.  It seems to be doing really well!