LANDSCAPING
This was the summer for landscaping. We have lived in our home for 15 years and haven’t really spent much time nor $$ outside other then a few things here and there. Nothing major all in one year though until this year when we decided to put in flower beds. We had to since we did the edging for all of them last year and it looked funny with grass inside the areas that were supposed to have flowers (LOL) Here is one of my FAVORITES! I really wanted to plant some honeysuckle vines, but I just didn’t have a spot for them, however, the landscape architect did chose 3 honeysuckle bushes to go under our bay window. They have REALLY PRETTY pink flowers on them which I have missed getting a picture of since they are now done flowering now… sigh…. I’ll have to get a picture of them next year. This fall they have bright red berries which are pretty.
This is another one of my favorites (of course I have MANY now that I have planted, pruned, watered, fed, etc every single one of these myself this summer! I LOVE this rose bush because the roses turn colors!Here is one of my helpers!! Nathan had a blast going and getting the plants we needed and hauling them in his new trailer he got for his birthday.

He’s really working hard in this picture (LOL)! You can tell by the look on his face that he’s pedaling hard with this big load.

This is by the backdoor at the corner of the sidewalk and driveway. First we had to lay the fabric mat down in all of the areas, then we set the plants around according to the plan we had and adjusted where we thought we needed to. Then, we planted. I’ve waited all summer to take the after pictures so I could upload before/after pictures to my blog all at the same time.

We had 2 high school kids that came to help us plant the bigger flower beds and our friend Bonnie came to help. She planted this entire flower bed by herself. THANKS BONNIE! The first picture is before followed by one that shows the entire flower bed, however, the color wasn’t very good so I took a few closer up shots because it really is a pretty flower bed which the 2nd picture just doesn’t show.

This is the west side of the house that is under the kitchen window right off from our patio.

I need to work on this flower bed a little more. Earlier this summer it was FULL of color, but it doesn’t have very many fall blooming things so it’s not as pretty right now. I saw some 5 foot tall daisies that I wish I would have purchased now because they would be really pretty along the backside of the flower bed up against the house. I guess there is always next year. I can tell I’ve lost my steam because there is still one bush in a pot… I need to get it planted. Here are some of the plants sitting out waiting to be planted. This was our staging area since it’s sheltered from the wind over here and it did take a week to get everything planted. I made 3 trips to town to buy new plants because I wasn’t sure how much we could get done in a day. The people at Lowe’s looked like they were expecting me by the 2nd day… then later I made several trips with the truck to get the bark… two truck loads (LOL).
This is the southeast corner of the house which is our library. We like to sit in the baywindow which you can barely see at the top right of this picture and now we’ll have something pretty to look at!This is the area where we had a tree last year, but it didn’t survive the winter so Josh had to dig it out and plant a new one. We also planted some grass in there which you’ll see in the after picture.


This is the back of the house. This was a little trickier because we had to work around the existing rose bushes and clematus.

This is the front of the house and you can see that I’m still not done yet. I have some bark to finish putting down, but maybe it’s good that I’m not quite done yet because now you can see the tubes for the drip system that we put in. It goes all the way around the house and waters all of the flower beds at one time. I’ve had to adjust some of the sprinklers with larger/smaller emitors so that the ones that need more water get what they need without drowning the plants that don’t need that much. And I’ve gone back through and put adjustable emitors on the bushes so I can deep water them once a week or so instead of watering them each day. Here is the backside of the white bench shown above. You can see the tubing running along the side of the house. It will eventually be covered with our “river” whenever we have time to finish that part of the project. There was an existing small flower bed in this area, but it was all above the bottom piece of siding. We had to dig it all out and make it level and below the bottom piece of siding. However, I didn’t want to ruin the daylillies and tree that were already there so I decided to make this a raised flower bed with moss rock around it and eventually the river will go on the backside of it somehow or through it or something… not sure what, but I left that flower bed and Tim said it would be fine since we left plenty of room for drainage. The part to the right of the rocks is the raised part which is kind of hard to tell in this picture.The above pictures are on the east side of the front of the house and the picture below is on the west side of the front of the house. The big dogwood has been there for several years, but I wanted to add some other things since there is a bench that sits out in the yard and faces that direction. A River Runs Through It!We wanted to have a flow to the side and front of the flower beds so we started at the back of the house at the SE corner where the drain tube comes down to the ground. The “river” runs from there through the flower bed that is at the east side of the house where we will eventually have the waterfall that is right out the bay window. Then, the river will continue under the baywindow and along the side of the house to the front flower bed..this side portion you’ll see below under future projects. Here is the start of the river at the end of the drain tube.then it winds through the grass, sage, golden ninebark and other stuff… It will eventually connect here in the front of the house where it meanders through this front flower bed… notice the little “bridge” of rock in front of the bench… (I’m still not finished with it. Tim needs to find some more rocks for me because I need a certain length and width to make it look right. Maybe we can go out rock hunting this fall.)… so it goes through this front flower bed to…to the edge of the sidewalk and step at the front door…picking up again on the other side of the sidewalk/step at front door and wanders through that flower bed seen in this picture going toward the years-old dogwood.It goes behind the old dogwood and ends at the front of the house on the NW corner… so, it starts at the SE corner goes all along the east and north sides of the house and ends at the SE corner… for those who care to have the coordinates (LOL).HIDING THE PROPANE TANK! Now I see this picture didn’t turn out very good either, but I’m not about to go take anymore and upload them (LOL) not to mention that it is midnight and my parents have the camera tonight! We planted 4 burning bushes around the propane tank . In a couple of years they should be grown up and covering it pretty well with some very nice fall color.
We planted these blue junipers at the end of the propane tank which faces the house so that it will cover the end of the propane tank making it not as noticeable from the patio.FUTURE PROJECTS: The “river” that I showed above will continue under the bay window and along the east side of the house all the way to the front flower bed where it will connect with the river out there and then may or may not end up going under the sidewalk with a little walkway bridge sometime…. way down the road since there are plenty of other more pressing projects to complete first. We have to cut the pavement here and square it up and then dig the ground down to below the bottom piece of siding and then make a v shaped ditch here.This is the view outside our bay window. We were planning to put a pond there, but have since decided it would be too hard to keep it clean. Now we are thinking a waterfall that goes into a hidden little pond that circulates the water back up to the top of the pond. We’ll see…. we need to do something with it this fall or next spring so this part of the project can be complete.This is at the entry to our driveway. The red wagon will be moved over to a mound that you’ll see we’ve started in the next picture. The other one will stay, but we need to do something different with the rock and add a few bushes or something to spruce it up a bit.It’s hard to see the mound that we’ve started here because of the shadow, but it’s at the front corner of our property at the opposite end from the above picture. We plan to build a pretty large mound here and have the wagon sit at the bottom of the mound with bushes and shrubs at the back of it. I really want to plant some honeysuckle vines and a huge bridesmaid spirea and maybe even a snowball bush or something else. Think big bushes with lots of white color set behind the reddish/orangish wagon.Look for landscaping part 2 next year.. unless we get to the underground sprinklers this year and then maybe I’ll blog that. Tim keeps saying he sure hates to see me dragging the hoses around all of the time…. but still another summer has come and gone with me dragging hoses all over the yard…. there just aren’t enough hours in the summer to do all of these summer projects while he’s busy working and yard work isn’t something one can do in the winter.