A Picket Fence For A Hydrangea

I live in Arizona, which is the Southwest, not the "South".  With that said.  I love:
Sweet Tea,
Hydrangea's  and
Magnolia Blossoms... 

Since I am not willing to transplant myself to the true South to have these 3 loves, I'll just bring them to me :-)

I am having fairly good success with my little garden patch.  By success I mean its all still a shade of green and I have not completely forgotten to water it (yet). ;-)  So, I felt somewhat confident in expanding my garden areas...  {the picture below might deceive you.  That is faux grass.  I tried very hard to grow nice "real" grass.  All I grew was mud.  So, we had this awesome faux grass put in. LOVE it!}

I had this little space between the "shed" and my husbands' "Mopar Garage"...  Which I deemed a perfect place to attempt to grow one of these:



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An Incrediball Hydrangea Shrub... which I had to order.  I went into my local HD and was talking with one of the awesome garden gals.  She was explaining to me how alkaline AZ soil is... not ideal for a hydrangea.  So, she told me what to do and gave me a little confidence boost to attempt it...  If its not going to make it I hope it lets me know within 90 days (I can take it back for a full refund... LOVE HD).  While I was talking to the awesome garden gal I told her that I also love magnolia's but "ya right on that growing in AZ."  She said that she's actually seen a couple of them in this area.... WHAT???  Ok, I'll try that too then.  (Got free shipping by ordering my 6.99 tree... A tree for 7 bucks??  Yep... Here she is:

:-) Do you see the little green thing almost centered? That's my baby Magnolia Evergreen tree... She's got some room to grow.  She might actually end up like this:


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Woohoo!!! Back to the hydrangea... it of course needed the classic white picket fence behind it.  So, I built one last week while I was waiting for my shrub and tree to come...

I even made a bird seed feeder.  Its on its own little post to the front right in the picture.  The 2 fence posts were set with some cement, as well as the little bird feeder post.  I had pre-painted all the pieces, so I need to do some touch up.  A little concrete got on the post. oops... This fence was loads of fun to build.  I love using the pneumatic nailer.  Wicked fun! 

Hopefully she makes it. 

Oh, and a garden update:

Nino :-)  decided that the pea's looked like a nice little bed for all 80lbs of him to lay on a couple of days ago... I was not impressed.

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