Landscaping!

My faithful blog readers, I know you have been waiting for the final landscaping pictures! 

Remember what the yard looked like a few months ago?

And the demolition in process?

Here is the interim....a pile of dirt. 

We lived with this for about 6 weeks until....

We had grading done, sod planted, a row of arborvitae and 2 accent trees planted.  We also had a cobblestone edge installed.  Please appreciate the cobblestones.  Its been too hot to really enjoy the yard yet, but we LOVE it.  We added so much more space to our little yard. 

This is an ivory silk lilac (clump form) tree.  This is what our landscaper suggested in the initial bid.  Instead of listening to him, Kevin and I decided to look at every single tree that would grow in that spot.  And because we enjoy torturing ourselves, we picked the ivory silk lilac.

This is a tina crabapple.  It will bloom white flowers in the spring.  It will stay short and cute.  I love it.

I also planted a hydrangea and row of weigela bushes (they should have pink flowers on the next year and they grow really fast). 

When I planted these bushes, I kept running into tree roots.  So I dug around them and either pulled, chopped or cut them out.  I was really proud of my brute strength. 

We are done with the yard for this year.  But next year we are going to:

1. Build a playhouse for the kids.  Actually, PopPop is going to build the playhouse.  And maybe we will have a shed built behind the playhouse.  Exciting stuff.

2.  We are going to pull out all these hastas and plant some more interesting plants.

3. I am going to dig up this hasta, that has grown up under the fence from our neighbors yard.  Split it.  Give half to my mom and plant the other half somewhere you can actually see it.  Isn't it pretty?

4.  I am going to get something pretty growing on this side of the house.  In July, while the kids were napping, I came outside and pulled out all the weeds that were back there.  The entire area was filled with knee high weeds. It took a long time.  A very long time. 

When I got married, I told Kevin that I would not do any yardwork.  Somehow I am the one trimming the bushes, mulching, pulling the weeds, and doing all the planting.  As Grace would say, "How crazy is that?!"

In all fairness, I must say that Kevin does all the snow removal, lawn mowing, and deals with the wacky trugreen people.