Landscaper's Challenge

If the posts on this blog seem a bit sparse these days, you can contribute that to the beautiful weather and me learning the joys of landscaping. I have fallen in love with it.

Every spare moment last week was spent outside. My children did excellent playing outside and enjoying the beautiful days too! I had babies r' us on my front porch, but it's all good!

Aunt Debbie and Uncle Durward were home last week. Aunt Debbie and I decided to take on the task of landscaping the entrance to our home. We lovingly call these projects our 'farm beautification process'. Eventually, we will have landscaped every square inch around our homes. Now that the chickens have found a new home towards the barn instead of on my porch and in our flower beds, we will be tackling a project a week. Full speed ahead!

Before we started, the entrance to our house looked like a big fat dirt patch. And the dirt wasn't helping a sister out in the floor cleaning department on the inside either.

Before shots:



The rewards of landscaping are well worth finding mulch in places on your body that you didn't know existed. I can't wait for all of this to fill in and grow!

This whole area is covered in shade so we had to choose plants that were hardy in the shade. Which if you live in Texas, it is pretty hard to find plants that do well in shade since mostly everything is geared towards the hot sun here.

I love how it turned out. I couldn't have imagined it was going to look this great when we started. I still want to put something to fill in the blank wall on the side of the house. I was thinking an old door with vines around it or something like that. Any thoughts?

Here is the finished product.

.....cobble stone pavers.....

......You can see the original hitching post to left. That has been here forever. Our home was built in the early 1900s.....

.....Hydrangeas.....

.....Azalea bushes. The trimmed ones were already there. We cut them back and filled with more azalea bushes....

.....A view from the porch. Gotta love symmetry.....

......A pair of pails and pulley. Say that real fast.....

.....Front part of the house. We put rose bushes in this existing flowerbed. Is that not the biggest rosemary bush??? Jasmine and a climbing rose bush will make their way up the front porch posts.....