Landscaping MAGIC

Ok, so maybe it's not magic, but it's still pretty awesome if I do say so myself.

We've finally made progress on the front yard! I decided the weather was perfect for planting, so I went to Home Depot (sigh~* I do enjoy that store...) and made a tree-style decision! I got us a little 5 food Cleveland Pear. She's purty, and supposedly will grow fast! My first trip to HD last weekend resulted in this:

That's 50 bucks worth of fun right there.
1 Tree
2 Potted Mums (the ones I got from Meijer just never took right, I don't think they were good quality)
1 jug of Preen ~ for the winning of the weed war
4 New house numbers!

50 bucks of home improvement stuff can go a long way! After I got home Brian and I stood in front of the house for a good hour hemming and hawing over where to put the tree and what else we should do right now, because even after we planted the tree and put out the new mums it was still going to look fairly hideous. So the decision was made to mulch.

In fall??? Yes, in the fall. We'll spread more in the spring, but will be worth it so that I don't have to cringe when I look at our raggedy dirt clod farm. Also it's on sale right now, since it's fall. So back to HD we went...

Of course though, mulch was not all that caught our eye. Oh no. They had my hearts desire hidden amongst the junipers and shrubberies... a dwarf burning bush! I have always known I wanted these, I love burning bushes like mad, but the regular kind get so huge! But I didn't think a big-box store like home depot would carry that variety for some reason. Needless to say we bought it. Then we had to get it home....

Yeah, that's the ticket! Don't worry, we were gentle. I think it was still a little peeved though, because it did try to eat Brian on the drive home...

He survived, and the trauma is nothing a few decades of therapy won't fix.

So after we got the mulch and my new bush friend home, we stood in the yard and moved stuff around for another hour, then got to work. We knew we had to put the tree at least 10 feet from the house, and surprisingly, the dead spot in the middle of the yard was exactly that! It used to have a tree in it, which was a stump when we moved in. Then we had the tree people grind it away, so it was just an empty dirt pile.

We got them planted and I spent that evening and some of the next day spreading mulch. We also planted the new mums, got the fall wreath out, and Brian went up to the eave to figure out why one of our shutters is pushing away from the wall. It's bees. It's always bees for me. He hit them with some 'anti bee' stuff and soon he'll knock the nest down so we can realign the shutter.


First, a reminder of what it looked like when we moved in:

Then all summer it looked like this:

So embarrassing... And without further ado:

Ta da! The tree is right on the edge there...

There it is, and that's the bush as well! I'm actually pretty amazed at how much better it all looks with a little mulch and a couple starting plants. Yeah, we know the yard itself isn't there yet, but one thing at a time people! Also, here's a closer view of the festive front door:

I will be adding to the festive-nature of the front door, but Brian won't let me yet, he thinks it's still too early.

One last thing, I am liking the view out our lower level window now!

That hosta better watch its step, it's the only one that survived from the previous owners. The others didn't know their place...