Gardening!

We had such a fantastic clear Saturday this last weekend. So Steven and I decided to go out and do some yard work. He worked on trimming hedges and my hydrangea and I worked on weeding and cleaning up stray leaves and other crud in our yard.

I had been staring at our sad looking hydrangea plant since we moved in and I felt so bad for it. So when I saw it after Steven cut it back I was impressed. He was shocked that it was already blooming leaves and had green spots all over it. I've been warned that it might not produce flowers this year, but I'm ok with that. I am just happy to have it in the yard and that its being brought back to life! We shall see on the flowers.

Our yard debris container was overflowing with all the dead hydrangea bits and the hedge trimmings and I put it over the top with my weeding and stray dead leaves. It is a lot of hard work cleaning up the left over bits, but because we moved in in December it wasn't really a great time to get out and clean up the yard. Also, we were really concentrating on the inside of the house because I knew that I'd want to be outside as soon as it was nice. I was right.

There is a lined bed on the side of the house by the air conditioner unit and where we keep the garbage cans. We plan to level the area next to our fence and use it as storage for all the cans. Right now there is only a small area covered with stones and it is not level, which makes it difficult to move the cans out and back in. I discovered this when I had to put the cans out while Steven was out of town. Yuck! Well the whole area on the side of the house was full of weeds, the raised bed was weeds, leaves and garbage and the bark needs a new dusting. At least for now it is fully weeded and racked and it looks a lot brighter. The other side of the house had blackberry bushes that were SO overgrown. We took that on right away and now they are only stumps. We'll have to be careful about removing all of the pieces so that they don't come back. They are so hard to kill and so bad to have on the side of the house. Thankfully now they are gone.

I also removed a bunch of piled up leaves from the back of the porch area in the backyard. There are three rose bushes and a medium tree that is starting to bloom. I need to cut the roses back and make sure the tree isn't going to damage the siding. Then I'll have to start the area around the back of the yard. We have some ferns and mystery grasses to remove as well as decide our final plan for my raised beds for veggies and herbs. We have talked about removing a portion of the grass and creating a stone pathway and 3 large raised beds. We need to decide soon so that we can work on removing the grass and making the beds before planting season, which is going to be here before we know it.

Well after all this sunshine and yard work it went right to my head and I got so excited. I know it is WAY too early to plant outside, but I do have a garden window in the kitchen, so I cleaned out some of my old pots and we went to the store. It is too early for 'starts' of any herbs, so we tried planting seeds. This is my first seed plant and I'm excited to see what comes of it! I'll try to post pictures if they start seeding. Supposed to be in the next few weeks. Here's hoping. Photos of the yard to follow as well...