Starting to bloom around here

We got dumped with rain all day yesterday. The river, in it's normal spring look, is all brown and sure came up some. Not near flooding stage or anything, but you can noticeably tell it's higher. We are on very high bank, so never any worries in that department, anyway. It's just it's ugly season, LOL.

DH is ready for me to plant all my annual flowers and I keep telling him its probably a couple weeks too early. But he mentioned again about picking up "all my flowers" Sunday when I(we?) go into the city. I said "all the flowers" will take up all the back of the car and I am needing to pick up a grocery order so there isn't room to do both on the same day. Then he said well maybe we need to make 2 trips to the city this weekend. One Saturday for flowers and then Sunday. It sounds like he also wants to stop at the cemetery and leave some flowers for his mom. He isn't up and about yet this morning, so I'll see if he feels like going in this afternoon. At a minimum I would love to at least get my hanging baskets if they have them and stuff to plant in the 2 whiskey barrels on each side of the front door.

The 2 patio chairs I ordered with my gift card from my boss arrived yesterday. You can also see that the azalea I planted last summer has some blooms on it! Yay! the one on the other side of the patio looks half dead :( - but part of it looks ok and has some buds about to bloom. Who knows why that one is dying.

I also noticed my lilac bush out in the driveway island is showing green buds, so that is a good sign. I have no idea what is going on with the other flowering plants out in the island LOL. Probably because I don't know if there was something I was supposed to do with them when summer ended. One is a lily type and just looks like 3 tall sticks sticking out of the ground. One is a peony and one a dahlia. The plant we put in (replaced one that died), where we put our old dogs ashes, seems to be ok and survived being buried all winter in snow. It also looks like some of my small "grassy" type plants along the perimeter of the house aren't coming back. But the ones that are day lilies are, so I think I'll just put in all daylilies in those spots. In all the whiskey barrels on the rockery ledge, I had planted creeping phlox and they all look good and green. They've taken over half the barrels so I won't need to add much annuals in there this summer. 

The week went by and no news on my raise. How long does it take to decide? I figured I'd know by the end of the week.

I think I found a futon type couch I like for my office. The frame is solid wood and the cushion/mattress part looks like leather type. The reviews on it are good. It's not something that's going to get a lot of use at all, so I don't want to spend a bunch on something. It will look nice and make the room finally look more finishedm as well as provide extra sleeping if we ever need it (you know....like when the 50 people in my dream show up....). I also recently came across this "end table" that is really a place to put the kitty litter box. I'm thinking of getting that, too, so I don't have to have this big wire dog crate in my office. It looks so nice, haha!