Rockin' out to Guitar Hero

Our spare time this spring has been devoted to yard projects. We tried to focus on a couple projects this year. One was to upgrade the vegetable garden bed...this is the original bed.

Bryan built a second bed, tore up the sod around the two and added bark. Abby lovingly planned lettuce, spinach, carrots, snap peas, eggplant, zucchini and two types of tomatoes. Except for the lettuce and tomatoes, everything was started from seed...keep your fingers crossed that we're able to harvest something besides weeds! *

At the beginning of spring, the flowerbed along the north side of the backyard was in sad shape.

Hours of weeding later, it's looking much happier.

The other main yard project we took on was to add flower beds in the front of the house. Here's the plain grass yard...

...and a close-up of how it looked before we started.

And the (almost) finished product! We ripped up sod, layed down weed fabric, put in border, added top soil and hydrangas (they're sunk in the soil in growers pots so they can be moved inside for the winter). The plan is to slowly fill-in between the hydrangas with some perennials and hopefully add a rhodedendron on either side of the walkway. For now, we've got dahlias in the large colorful pots by the front door...hopefully there will be photos of big gorgeous blooms to share later this summer!

Here it is...not done yet, but looking much happier we think! *