I can't stand my hands being dirty

I just have to say, that I think my daddy would be proud to hear I took the initiative to make my yard purdy. He's always digging around in the dirt, or at least, would be if he could. He likes plants and flower and the such. I do too, just I really don't like getting dirty. And usually, I end up killing the things right after they get over the shock of it all. Nice, huh? Well, today's day 2 and they've all perked up and are still green. I'm going to ask Dad to send some clippings of some hearty plants with my sisters when they come down next month.

I went to Lowe's (the do-it-yourself mega store, right?), spent about 56 hours looking for some plants that I thought would survive even me. But I also had to get some digging tools, some plant fodder, and...I bought something else...whatever, I forget. I was going to get some cool fence/stone thingy for the parameter (like the big word?) but I didn't measure and I'm an awful estimator, so I passed it up.

Before I started, the whole section place looked like this...seriously.

But I was able to overcome the overgrown weeds. I have to tell of my battle wounds though, I have a water blister on my right index finger, next to a blood blister, both really quite small, but big enough to be known. My right knee has a tender scratch on it, right on top of a red raw knee cap. My left knee is no better off, but minus the scratch. My feet came out the best with just the toenail polish chipped. It only took about 2 1/2 to 3 hours to weed, do-the-little-thing-with-the-fork, mix in some miracle grow, plant the plants, water, and put away the mess. Impressive, no? I had thought to take pictures of before and after, but I couldn't find my camera and didn't re-think about it until I was almost done. So no before pictures. But, instead of a nice line between the dirt and the grass, imagine a blurry no-man's land with grass, unknown weeds and dandelions. I think there's a picture of the pile of refuse I plucked from the now beautiful dirt.
To your left of the picture are what I call rock rose, but the real name is something like porticula or something. We used to have them growing at our house in Grenada. No, not THIS plant, but the same TYPE of plant...But we only had the purple flower variety. The full blooming blosson resembles a rose of sorts. To your right of the picture are two petunia plants. I have no clue how resilient they are, but the tags said "full sun." I think the only time they'll NOT have sun is dawn...yup, dawn.
What? Just because I have mad gardening skills doesn't mean that my watering skills match!

Here's the finished effect. The dirt is still that same mottled colored. It's not wet any more, I promise, but it still looks wet.

Oh, yes, I forgot to mention my most serious battle wound. That bush next to the apartment is a holly bush. Nice for pretty berries, but yucky for trying to gather leaves from dirt. I blubbed quite a bit when it poked me. :(
Much to my dismay, my finger nails were caked with dirt. EW! I tried to clean them, but I had no success...until I had an epiphany! Whilst I showered to clean the sweat and dirt off the other parts of me, I cleaned my finger nails. You know, how they always get softer and stuff when wet, I finally came out victor over the dirt. You only thought I was weak!! I guess the picture of the weeds must be on my phone. I took them with my phone when I thought I'd never find my camera, but I did, so we're all good.