Around the yard --- the things we have done

Well, I woke up kinda okay, at least I am on the top side of the dirt!  LOL

Kinda wound up yesterday with a cold, I think from all the raking and shovelling in the cold wet rain while we laid our motorhome parking pad (see post three blogs back for that)   I was pretty wet and cold when that was done.

I missed out on our kid's anniversary party, and even moreso, taking Allegra and Mason overnight!  Oh well, there are five days in July that we are taking them so that can make up for it.

I did wander around taking pics of our yard over the last few days.   Since the house sat for 2 years unoccupied, it needed sprucing up and some new flower beds and trimming of the trees and bushes (plus two trees that were rotting inside and had to come down last winter)

Here are some pics of all our flowers now in bloom and looking so pretty!

I bought four colorful bamboo flower pots for these little pansies.  Steve's coworker found the plant stand laying in the park where they work, so he brought it home for me!  I have that stand by the back door to give me smiles each time we come in the house.  My mom says pansies are happy little faces...awwwwww   The clematis vine in the big pot with the coleus from Connie around the bottom is standing between the big garage door and the smaller passage door to the workshop area.  It's a nice big pot that I painted.  We can drag it inside the garage to winter over the clematis....

Along the south side of the house, there is a row of well-established variegated shrubs... I am not sure what kind they are.  Right now they are in full bloom with some pretty white and pink blossoms.  They fill in that whole section nicely and we just cut them level with a hedge trimmers so they don't get too tall.

See?  These shrubs are just in that back section along the south wall.   Oh, that one big window in the center section of the house is my Loom Room.  I can just make out the pretty Singer Treadle Sewing Machine there peeking out from under my lace curtains!

Along the south side of the house was all tulips and snow glories and daffodils during the spring.   They have all gone down now to the ground, so I could cover that area with some mulch and set some flower pots on top of them for the rest of the summer.  That way next spring they can poke their heads up again!   I marked the blank spaces where none of the bulb type flowers came up and was able to plant some of my coleus and some heuchera too.   I will dig those up in the fall to winter over inside again.... and that will let the tulilps and other bulb flowers peek up in the spring uninhibited.   We also buried a soaker hose along this side of the house which faces south.  The dirt seems to dry out fast with the sun on it... so a soaker hose will be a nice tool to keep it moist. 

 Oh, p.s. we are looking into putting three of those "roll out" type of downspouts,

 to eliminate the ones crossing the sidewalk that are a serious tripping hazard!  LOL 

This clematis vine was here when we bought the house, but the trellis was old and wooden and had seen better days.  Steveio bought me this lovely wire one for Xmas, because I had just randomly mentioned that I would love to replace that wooden one when we had been looking at the house in November!   And he remembered!!!!  What a great present!    I don't know what color the clematis is going to bloom out with, it will be a surprise.   Also here is the very tall pine tree in the front yard that shades the house nicely from the southeast.  I think it's a Black Pine and has very scraggly branches.   We had to cut a few of the lower ones off to get the motorhome in and out past it.

Our new weeping cherry tree in the front yard is growing and has new buds and even some tiny cherries starting to pop out!  It was my Mother's Day present.   I surrounded the base with white and red petunias, and some curved pieces of cement edging.

In the front flower bed, I have all red and white flowers... to go with our red geranium pots on the porch and also our American flag we try to fly daily.  The little red gerberra daisy is from Allegra and Mason.  The four green hostas are from Paula and Mel, and the center variegated hosta is from Juanita and Norm.  The new hydrangea shrubs growing to the far right are from Charlotte.  So many of my plants are from my friends!

We have laid down this new black colored mulch which I think is striking 

and shows off the flowers better than the tan or red stuff.   

Here is the new perennial bed we just laid in the backyard.  Previously there had been two large rotting box elder trees here.  After Steve cut them down, he rented a stump grinder to get the stumps down to ground level or lower.  We took the excess dirt from leveling the motorhome parking pad (25+ wheelbarrows of it!~)   and created a dog boned shape flower bed over the tops of the stump areas and connected in between.    On one side I put a rose bush and the other side two blue hydrangeas.  In between are varied hostas and behind are planted many bulbs of those big tall canna plants from Jim and Norma.   Around the base of the two blue hydrangeas are plugs of a sedum ground cover from Paula and Mel, and some snow on the mountain near the rose bush.

I am thinking of each time we go somewhere and see a nice round rock about 8-10 inches across, I will take it home, paint it white and set it around the edge as a border.  It will take a lot of rocks to surround the whole thing, but it will be fun to collect them from various places we camp, or picnic, or just see them in the fields or woods as we drive.

Yesterday Steve shoveled up the very last of the dirt from making the motorhome parking pad.  He filled in low spots here and there in the yard, and around another stump he had dug out along the northern edge of our yard.  What a hard working man!  The neighbors to the southwest have left their yard all natural and overgrown --- it's kinda like a little woods back there behind us. How nice is that?

Oh, I forgot to mention my tomato patch alongside the garage!   Little Jameson helped me turn over the dirt and dig it all up last weekend.  We added some boards as edging and I planted 18 tomato plants, all different kinds.   I lined up all the cages and added a thin board across the top to secure each cage with a plastic wire tie.  Now the plants can climb up and not pull over the cages here and there.   I mulched all the plants since I took this pic, on the advice of my friend Juanita.  Steve also sacrificed the second blue barrel that was a trash can in the garage.  I painted it up, and we added a spout to the bottom for another rain barrel.  Friend Sarah gave us the two big cement blocks to hold it up off the ground high enough for my watering can to set underneath.

I can just about taste those home grown 'maters .....

So there, I just about went around the whole house!   The north side just has some thick cedar shrubs and a bed of day lilies... so I didn't snap any pics of that.   Bit by bit we are making this house into our home.

It's funny that we are having so much fun doing up a house, when last year at this time we were joyful that our other house sold and we were out of debt and ready to hit the road!  

But as my friend Paula said... 

"Sometimes you have to wake up, roll over, and dream a different dream"

And we are doing our best to make our dreams come true!