Exceedingly Mundane

I blogged briefly over the weekend about how we spent all Saturday working in our yard. Tim and I were both worn out by the time we finished, which was right before dark. I’ve been fairly sore ever since, from stretching muscles that I apparently don’t use regularly. 🙄

We got a lot done, though, and we were really pleased. We had originally planned to redo one of the big flower beds in the backyard and maybe build an arbor or swing, or (Stacy’s idea ONLY) make a patio type area where we could put chairs and a firepit (I was outvoted quickly on this one). 🙂 Instead, in the end, we decided to basically redo the bed like we had it before, except with some new plants. We even put some plants back in that we had in that bed before (which drives me nuts, we dug up perfectly good plants and put them at the curb for the garbage man to take away, then went back and bought the same thing). Enough to make a penny-pincher like me nuts.

Anyway, we got most of it done, and I took a few pictures. Check out the extended page if you’re so inclined.

OK, up front, I plant annuals in a strip bed by the sidewalk twice a year. I’m getting tired of doing this. I want to find something to plant here that will stay, year round.

We had a bad problem with weeds in this flower bed over the winter, so Tim decided to try landscape fabric in here under the flowers. Well. I do not like working with landscape fabric. If you have a small piece, and you’re trying to plant a couple dozen small flowers, and the wind is blowing pretty hard, it’s hard to keep the landscape fabric taut and get your holes cut and get your flowers planted without the wind blowing away your fabric. And yes, genius people out there, I tried anchoring it down with bricks and things, but it is a royal pain in the butt to cut this stuff and try to keep it tight while still trying to stick your hands in there and plant your flowers. It is more than I had patience for on this particular windy Saturday. I swore to Tim I would never use that stuff again. 🙂

Here’s the bed about half planted with marigolds:

The other flowering spot in the front is a small bed by the garage. This time, I planted a butterfly daisy and some portulaca:

We are also trying something else new for the first time. In all the years I’ve lived here, I’ve always mulched everything with pine straw. This time, we decided to try the cypress mulch. We bought 6 bags of the natural, but decided (after seeing a lot of neighbors with the red stuff) that we would take it back and get the red tinted mulch. Let me tell you, a bag of that stuff doesn’t go very far. We’ve bought 16 bags or more so far, and we still have several beds left to mulch. That stuff adds up, quick! But we like the way it looks. The two trees out front and all the front beds are done with the red mulch:

Here’s a picture of my deck planters with begonias and moss rose planted in them:

And the shrubs and roses lined up, waiting to be planted in the newly renovated bed in the backyard:

Tim added a lot of top soil and compost to this bed and worked it in with the tiller. Then, he laid the landscape fabric (I swore I wasn’t doing that again, remember?!) and we experimented with how to layout the plants. He liked my way better, so we went with this arrangement:

And, quite a bit later, we had it planted and mulched (for the most part, we need to get another bag and fill in some empty spots):

NOW, I know it doesn’t look like much. The plants are very small right now, but believe me, they will grow. The plants we planted along the back (next to the fence) are lorapetalum, and they will get huge. We dug several out of this bed that were taller than the fence. They are tiny now, but they won’t be for very long.

BONUS: For good measure, I’m also throwing in a couple of pictures of flowers I had planted a few weeks ago. These are doing good and blooming nicely. Here’s some petunias in a coconut planter hanging on my deck railing:

And, a flower that I tried for the first time this year, a cosmos. It’s doing good and so I bought two more and put in this flower bed with this one:

Impatiens in a small bed by my deck, and some in a hanging basket: