More Plants for the Backyard

The landscaper arrived with some of the trees for the yard- they are the two Kousa Dogwoods that go in each corner behind the patio/pavilion.

We also have a cute bird residing in the birdhouse hanging on the fence!

With those trees planted (and a few other small bushes), the landscaper said we are at the top of the estimate he had given us- there had been more stonework/steps than he had originally anticipated.  

This was a bit disappointing- so much empty space that we thought would be filled with plants! But we decided that we can do the rest of the plantings ourselves and headed over to the garden center.

Spirea Bushes filled the back of the car!

We got herbs to make an herb garden inside the circle of boxwoods:

Spearmint, Italian Parsley, Foxley Thyme, Sweet Marjoram, Upright (pink flower) Rosemary, Berggarten Variegated Sage, Raspberry Dressing Rumex, Lemon Thyme, and Basil. 

Some additional plants that we picked up are:

10 Double Play Pink Spirea Bushes, 5 Japanese Andromeda bushes, Pincushion Flower, Garden Phlox, Digitalis, Astilbe, Balloon Flower, Blue Mirror Delphinium, Balmy Lilac Bee Balm, Pachysandra, and Variegated Weigela.

Other plants that we moved from other parts of the yard were Hostas, Lily of theValley, Coreopsis, Climbing Hydrangea, Azalea, Peonies, Lavender Bushes (some of these might not make it- they were a bit bedraggled).  There are a few others from our other gardens that we moved but can't remember the names of!

Next step is the landscaper bringing in a lot of mulch!

Plants!

Right after we picked up the pedestal, a truck with plants arrived!

60 boxwoods!!!!

Our requirement on the boxwoods was that we didn't want the ones that smell like cat pee!

The landscaper suggested that we also need ones that are small and don't require too much trimming.

Here is the final selection:

Can't wait to see them placed & planted!

Planting Plans

While waiting for the fence guys to come back, the landscaper came over and gave us the plans that he drew up for plantings in the garden.

Here's where we were with the hardscape plans:

Here are the planting plans:

We like most of the plants he chose.  We may decide to swap a couple of them out for some of our favorites that we already have.
-We had dug up a bunch of them and placed them safely in our fenced in veggie garden (which I just realized I never posted about building last year, so I'll have to come back to that in a future post!)
-I love lavender plants, however I'm not sure about filling in the insides of the boxwood garden around the sundial with them... I found this herb garden plan and think maybe I want to do something like that!  It seems more colonial :)

Catching Up- November 2013

Here are more random items from the past month that I didn't get onto the blog!

The attic/media room project is moving along (currently getting more estimates for sheetrock, and trying to schedule the insulation guys!)

In the meantime, we've had other little things keeping us busy...

Our youngest's birthday party was last month- it was a Scooby Doo theme (see more here and here).

We lucked out with great weather and were able to have it entirely outside- a very good thing, considering the upstairs hallway is STILL in bad shape!

Just in case guests needed to use the bathroom, I hung these signs up...






Since then, we're working more on the hallway... There's still one wall with wallpaper to remove.  This got put on hold when I got two herniated discs in my neck from removing the majority of it!  I'm not looking forward to jumping back into that!

But the rest of the hallway has gotten a first round of sanding and spackling.  I took a break one day and came back to find this...

I was told it's "bear tracks in the house!"  At least we're still having fun around here!

We were given some house plants from my aunt & uncle!
One is a huge fica tree that's at least 20 years old!  Some of the branches were beat up from the move, so Mike trimmed it back, and braided it's trunk a little further (the bottom was already braided).
Here it is during the trimming process-->
(I'll have to update with a finished photo...)

We also got a pretty palm...

You can see the rocks we put in the planters.

These are serving two purposes:
1- keeping the plant standing up-right
2- keeping our cat out of the dirt!



There's also a HUGE peace lily plant that I need to get photos of... Mike was dividing and re-potting it.

Last bit of news is that we ordered the flooring for the attic!

The requirements was for it to be 3/4" hardwood (so that we can re-finish it if we ever need to).
Here's what we ended up with... it's a nice chocolate-y brown, and the boards are 4-3/4" width, so don't look too narrow as some of the other options did.

The best part is that it was on sale at Lumber Liquidator!

Now we wait for it to come in... should be around the second week of December.


I need to get a "To Do" list going on this project, it's just so satisfying to cross things off!  Maybe later this week!