Clearing up shrubs and New planter

I've been trying to clear up the shrubs on the side of the house for weeks now.  It's sort of an on-going project I guess.  It's amazing how the green bin fills up so quickly from just clearing up one little section.  This is going to take me forever!  Can you spot me??? :-)

Doesn't look like I did anything!

And look at what I have to look forward to.  Yikes!!! I'm so worried about finding that skunk in there!

I decided to pick up some more plants for the garden.  A lady around the neighborhood was giving away the Birds of Paradise plants.  I was intrigued by these plants the very first time when we arrived here in California.  The flowers that come up really do look like the head of the birds! 

And I picked up this golf ball shaped planter too from a different person.  Isn't it so cute?  And as you can tell, I'm trying to hide the rain barrel.  Rain barrel? What rain barrel??? See... you can't even see it anymore :-P

Well, I actually went back to the lady with the Birds of Paradise and decided I wanted to pick this plant up too with the planter box. I thought it looked "interesting".  Ha ha!

Well, I dragged Bobby to pick up this planter and... what a disaster!  The bottom of the planter gave way and the lady was kind enough to give us this huge plastic which really saved the minivan from being trashed with soil!

Looks like this will be our afternoon project - putting the planter back together.  Funny enough I had a plank of wood laying around.  I think I found it in the shrubs when I was clearing it out??!

So far the plant is hanging on despite losing a few twigs:

I was going to saw the plank into multiple pieces to repair the bottom of the planter, but after starting out with a few sawing motions I realized this was going to be a difficult process. Soooo... I decided to just cut the plank into half.  Graham was more than happy to help!
Here's the video: https://youtu.be/bOG6wD20XS0

We were more than happy to show some muscle after :-)

And then, we had some fun "karate chopping" the piece of wood:

I managed to find some wood screws and Graham and I screwed the planks to the bottom of the planter.  Oh, I had to hammer lots of nails to get the 4 sides back together.  I hope that all holds up!  I was contemplating about taking EVERYTHING apart but it was too overwhelming just thinking about it!

The pieces of wood/planks split a little when we drilled the screws in.  Like I said, hope it all holds together!!!

Tada!!! Final product. Bob obviously doesn't think too much of it :-P

Well, I don't know but somehow the plant "spoke" to me and I gave it a new home.  Momma happy, everyone else is happy. Yay!!!