The definition of insanity

I have a brown thumb...an extremely brown thumb. Every plant that I've ever attempted to plant, pot, and water ends up dead. Therefore, my decision this weekend to once again step into the world of gardening is the definition of insanity. The way I see it is that I have little choice. I'm going to be giving a rather large baby shower for my neice Jenessa and I have to make my backyard presentable. We recently put in a rather extensive back yard, including a large deck and pergola. The plan was to place large clay pots with vine plants at various locations around the pergola so that eventually the pergola would be covered with beautiful flowering vines. The useless landscaper who put in this extensive back yard filled the pots with rocky dirt from who knows where and planted the most horrid plants (we had asked for star jasmine). Apparently he has a brown thumb as well because two of the three that he planted died and don't even get me started on the rest of the back yard. Let's just say that during the winter our back yard looks like it was landscaped by Tim Burton (see Nightmare at Christmas to get a mental picture). We had to hire another landscaper to come in fix the work of the useless landscaper. Anyway, back to my gardening.

I found some wonderful smelling star jasmine at Lowes and I gathered together my supplies.
You can see by the shape that this trowel is in how often I dig into the soil!
Here's the first pot filled with soil from who knows where. There was one rock in there the size of a softball.

I bought "Moisture Control" potting mix because it said on the instructions that it makes watering easier by taking the guess work out of watering. I also liked the fact that it was a "Miracle Grow" brand. I figured I would be increasing my chances of success. I realize that I might be slightly delusional here.
The first step was to dig up the hard soil and embedded roots and get them outta there!
Once I finished getting rid of the bad soil I started adding the new potting mix and mixed it around with the old soil. I felt like I was stirring a big pot of soup.
Here's the bag full of old hard dirt and roots that I removed from the pot.
Here's the finished product. Not bad for a brown thumber such as myself.

Here's the star jasmine in its new pot positioned to grow up that post and make my back yard look and smell beautiful.
I also bought a few pots to plant various flowers and I placed them on my front porch. It's a mixture of impatiens, mums, and petunias.
This is my hydrangea that I asked our new gardner to put in and it just started flowering. I'm so excited because they look so pretty and I've always wanted a hydrangea.
Here's the second pot that I put on my front porch.
Here's a close up of my pretty bright pink hydrangeas. Our friend Brad told me that if I put a little aluminum foil in the soil that I can turn these to a blue color. I might just try it next year. Keep your fingers crossed that I don't kill these too.