Since I have a green thumb....

I have officially become obsessed with landscaping. Once I got the front done it became this landslide of "where else can I plant stuff?". I absolutely love it! It's all about personal preference you can get so creative which I really love. 

It also adds so much to the property. The difference is amazing. 

Recap of the last job (seriously we need grass on the right!): 

On Memorial Day, I widened the bed from the front right to the side of the house, reaching the side porch wall. It was actually the husband's idea & I'm not mad about it. It's a great space.

BEFORE (it does look strange how the bed just ends):

AFTER (I really like the idea of sweeping it around):

Now to get all the items to plant. The problem (or challenge I should say) is that we are SO shaded. I mean, I really wish you all could see it. You are driving to the house & it is 70 & sunny and then you pull into the drive and all of a sudden the sun has gone down - it's dark! We have a lot of tree cover which I do love, but I also love the sunshine! I have been googling and searching and talking to everyone I know about shade flowers/plants, preferably perennials. I don't mind putting in some impatiens or begonias every year but as for the bigger plants, Id love for those to come back. 

So we went to Countryside Greenhouse. I have never been & it was like Christmas. I loaded up on various hosta, astilbe, foxglove (biennial, but we will see what happens) and hydrangea. I really wanted to find bleeding heart but that was a no-go for this trip.

Luckily my car was cleaned out previous to this trip because we packed it in.

Now the hard part - where will this all go.

I have to make sure the foxglove is in the back. It can grow so incredibly tall and I dont want it to overshadow the astilbe or even the hosta. I lined everything up to kind of have an idea where it would be planted. I still have to move some things but its a general outline. 

I ran out of daylight so this afternoon & tonight I will plant everything (fingers crossed) - stay tuned!

Landscaping the front - FINALLY!!

I woke up to this on Sunday morning. How pretty is it? I just love living here. 

With Spring in full swing, the outdoor space is really coming along. There is, however, one space that I have been meaning to get to for a long time. & today was the day. 

My front porch project.

So when we left off I had moved all of the rocks and basically only dirt was left. Today was the day I got tired of dirt & decided to finish the job. My mother in law gave me a generous portion of her hosta's and since I wanted color but needed a shade flower, I bought a smattering of impatiens from the local greenhouse.

 As a reminder, this is where the area was at:

I framed out my border and started tilling the dirt. This was the easy part.

Now onto planting.

You can really tell the difference between the nice right grass side and the left side with all dirt. Hopefully we can have grass down there soon!

Roxy, as always, was a huge help.

& add some pretty flowers....

Coming together!

& the mulch...

Complete!! This was a time consuming six-hour project but so worth it.

Seriously though, grass is next.

We also had a beautiful hummingbird hanging around on Saturday so I put in a feeder for him. I have named him Dennis. He is loving the feeder! I am loving having a hummingbird.

Next landscaping will be in front of the well house and the bed in front of the garage.

Im really having a good time making the outdoor space pretty. Spring is here!! 

Baby trees on the border.

While we have many many trees here at the farmhouse we dont have many near the road. & because of this sometimes the noise - especially the 5 o'clock traffic - can get pretty loud and insane. Although we know we will always have road noise due to where we are located we want to do what we can do minimize it as much as possible. 

Enter our baby trees!

We got nine trees from Holland, about 30 minutes away. They are thuja evergreens, or green giant evergreens. They should grow 2-3 feet per year. We bought these because they were fast growing but also because they are great as a living privacy fence. 

We planted them in a line along the road, careful to leave enough room for growth but not too far apart where there will be holes. 

Im excited for these trees. Im excited not only to have some privacy but to also be able to look at these trees in 20 years and know that we planted them together. 

& that's pretty cool.