More Gardening Fun

I had another very productive day of gardening. Last night we got a new begonia to replace the one Kyle lopped off, as well as some petunias that needed to be planted today. This morning I had to get up early anyway, so I got started with trimming the shrubs in front of the house around 7:30. I have electric hedge trimmers, but I figured the neighbors might appreciate the hand clippers instead. I also get annoyed with how the shrubs look when I use the electric clippers. I forgot to take a picture of how nice they look, but they do look much better now that they are all the same height.
After trimming the hedges for about an hour, I got started on the side garden. Here is an overview picture of the whole thing. I know it isn't terribly clear, but I thought it was neat anyway.













I took a couple of 'closer ups' so you can see the pretty flowers. The lavender plant in the back I got in the garden center of a home repair store for $5. It is a fairly large plant and has a wonderful, strong, lavender scent.

























These are the last things I need to plant. My MIL brought them to me today. I will have to plant them tomorrow or the next day, as my poor, old back is so sore it hurts to think about gardening!












This is one of my favorite spots in the back yard. It is in between the fence, separating our yard from the neighbors, and our garage. It leads to an open area in the back underneath the canopy of a huge old Maple tree. the kids and Joe like to use this area as a path from the front to the back. It has become a sort of 'secret' pathway. I got the idea yesterday, that it would be really cool to mulch the path for them and then clean up the back area and make it into a patio type thing. Kyle and I raked all the debris from the area and then dug up a sizable tree stump from the middle of the path. Finally we put down landscape fabric followed by a thin layer of mulch. The kids think it is wonderful, and it was a cheap, easy way of making them happy...always a good thing!












Erin chose this little plant the other day. She brought it home, dug a hole and planted it all by herself.












This may seem like a silly picture, but if you had seen this walkway before, you would understand my pleasure at its current state! It was too embarrassing, really, to take a before picture. See how there is a little grass in the sidewalk crack on the left side of the photo? Well, this whole sidewalk was nearly swallowed by weeds and grass growing in the cracks. I also discovered another 6 inches of sidewalk on the right of the stoop. It was overgrown with grass and weeds. I think this is what made my back hurt so much. I sat on the ground for over an hour pulling up weeds.