St Patrick's Day Parade, Landscaping, Spring blooms

We started off this weekend by walking the neighborhood and checking out some of the spring colors blooming on the trees.  Our favorites are the dogwoood trees that are in full bloom all over town.

We also saw some red bud trees:

Then we headed downtown to the St Patrick's Day Parade:

They had everything from Irish Dancers:

To sword fighting Irishmen:

The NC State U band that is going to Dublin this week for their parade:

Our favorite though was the Golden Retreiver Rescure Organization:

We then had lunch on an outdoor patio at a restaurant in the City Market area (Jim had a Guinness that he loved!), and headed to Moore Square and listened to some bands play, and Jim was jealous of the little trains that the kids got to ride on:

The rest of the weekend we spent some time landscaping.  We bought some mulch and landscape edging and spruced up the tree area near our driveway.  The edging was made of recyled plastic bottles, and the mulch was a red that we thought would play well off the brick house.  It also helped give us a nice defined edge to mow around this summer:

Jim built a raised garden bed 4' x 8' for Colleen to grow her vegetables in.  We also used some top soil to fill in some of the low spots in our yard that fill up with rain water puddles

Colleen is going to plant some vegetables this week.  We both can't wait to eat home grown vegetables like we did last summer!