Landscaping

For a long time now I've been wanting to do something to the front flower beds to make them look nicer, but number 1 - I was lazy, number 2 - I didn't know what I wanted to do.

Here's how the front yard started out:

When the house was built, they planted bushes and laid down pine needles and that was all of the landscaping. After 2 years of living here, I finally got rid of the pine needles and did some work. Well, with the help of my mother of course (she worked in a nursery growing up so she knows a lot about plants).

The first thing we did was weeding and digging up the old small bushes because they had died. I thought it was strange that they had died, but once we started digging we figured out why... The flower beds were full of concrete, brick and rocks. What could grow in that?! We planted some new bushes and planted some flowers. I snapped these pictures while we were digging holes for the flowers:

Craziness... After we dug all that up and planted everything, we mulched and watered. Things are looking gorgeous now!

As you can see on the right, I took some leftover bricks from when the house was built to create a divider between the grass and the flower beds. It wasn't that much work, but I really like the look and hey, it was free!

In June, I bought some patio furniture on sale at Target and I love it. :)

The blue pillows came from Home Depot and were a birthday present from my mom.

After pouring a bunch of new soil in, I'm hoping the new bushes won't die like the old ones.

I bought that hose storage thingy (that's a technical term) and it's been great at wrangling the heavy water hose.

It's so nice to pull up to well-manicured flower beds after work each day instead of the ugly before, haha. :)