Working in the Yard

This year Mark and I decided to redo some of the backyard landscaping. (The death of our forsynthia bush really started the whole thing.) I am not the kind of person that really cares about flowers and landscaping--I only care about my vegetable garden and that we have enough tomatoes for the summer. However, Mark cares about the flowers and everything, so I have been out looking for the best flowers and shrubs that I can get with the small amount of money I have left over from an editing job I landed in the winter.

After too many trips to Home Depot, Lowes, Wal-Mart, Meijer, Joe Randazzo's, and Mrs. Grey's Greenhouse, we have finally gotten everything. Here is what we bought:

320 lbs. of dirt (8 bags)
3 packs ofvegetable seeds--sugar snap peas, cherry tomatoes, regular tomatoes
4 Beefsteak tomato plants
4 Early Girl tomato plants
4 Cherry tomato plants
4 Green pepper plants (we will see if we actually succeed with green peppers this year)
4 Jalepeno plants
1 Hanging basket
3 Burning Bushes
1/2 flat of Phlox
2 Purple plants
12 Yellow plants
1 Garden flag and post
1 Windchime
1 Flamingo (Fred)
1 Cement bird (Sprit)

Wow, when I list it out like that, it seems like a lot! Today we planted the bushes (after pulling up the dead/dying forsynthia bushes), got both the vegetable plants and seeds planted, and moved our daisies to where our irises are.

We still have to plant the purple and yellow flowers where the daisies used to be. We also have to figure out what we are doing with the plants that are where the phlox are going. I didn't realize that our hostas are as big as they are. Some of the hostas are going to the front yard, but we can't move them until we figure out what we are doing with everything else out there!

A nice thing, though, is that our neighbors across the street is giving us three bushes from their front yard for our front yard. They are very nice looking and extremely healthy, and they are helping us move them!

Tomorrow, I will take more pictures to post, but here are two from last week.

Our new hanging basket.

Since I decided to make a vegetable garden on the side of the garage near our house, I had to move all the rocks to a different location. I had no idea how many rocks there were! (And since it was my idea, it was my job--but Mark helped out at times.)

I moved them to our existing burning bush that the dog likes to do laps around. It had small pebbles around it before we moved in, but few were left after three years of Sadie. That meant that it was mostly dirt, and if it were raining when she was out there. . .not cool!

As soon as we put the rocks there, Sadie stopped going around the bush. She likes to run "figure eights" in the yard, and now she can't. It was funny to watch her running full speed and then having to stop and turn around before she hit the rocks. Sometimes she really gets going, and we cheer her on, and then she really starts running. (We call it training for the doggy olympics.)