Spring

We have been loving spring around here.  After such a cold winter, it has been great to be outside.  We moved into our house last April, so we really didn't have time to work outside last year.  We did a little, but mainly had to focus on get unpacked and settled inside.

Almost all of our guests enter through the back door, so the front door doesn't get as much attention.  I planted some yellow Lantanas in the containers by the door & weeded the beds....that's all for the front.  I don't know much about flowers & shrubs, but I had good luck with Lantanas last year, at my mom's recommendation, so I planted them again. 

I planted a combination of flowers in some pots on the back deck...petunias, vincas, sweet potato vines, and a few others.  I kept all the plastic name things so I could remember at the end of the summer exactly what I had bought.  I figure trial & error is the best way to learn. 

We decided to redo the flower bed by the back door since that's the one that most people see & it looked TERRIBLE.  Eventually I want to put rocks in all the flower beds.  Since we have so many leaves, it will make it much easier to blow the leaves off the rocks.  Mulch makes it difficult.  This little corner was the perfect test area.  We dug everything up and pressure washed the house...

I love how it turned out.  So much nicer by our entrance... 

The shrubs are pink carnations.  They have started to bloom & they look so pretty.  Miles loves to help outside.  He says his favorite thing to do with me is plant things, and his favorite thing to do with Darrin is ride the mower.

We've already had several cookouts.  We have to beat the heat before it's too hot to sit outside.

I got Pin-spired last weekend by this pin and decided to plant some lettuce & herbs.  We eat a lot of salads & oddly enough, Miles likes to eat plain lettuce.  It takes 45-60 days to grow.  If it does okay, I will plant it earlier next year.  In the bottom container, I planted baby Romaine on the left side and another kind of Romaine on the right side. 

In the top container, I planted chives, parsley, and cilantro.  We use chives a lot and I don't like to buy them b/c we never use the entire package.  We use cilantro in homemade salsa.  I wanted to plant a third herb and parsley was the only other one that seemed like we might use it.  We'll see.

Today at work, my friend, Melanie, reminded me that I need to keep the animals away from it.  She lives near me, so she knows how many animals we have around.  Ironically, when I pulled in the driveway after work, this is what I found....along with possible tracks in my lettuce container...

Hopefully we've outsmarted him now...

It's been fun experimenting in the yard.  I wish we had unlimited funds to do everything we wanted to, but that's just not the case.  Little by little, it's beginning to take shape.