Yard Projects, Before & After

We have spent most of our weekends doing yardwork this spring (after four rounds of visitors, photos of which I've not yet uploaded!) This entire bed was covered with weeds, which I pulled by hand. David then dug in peat moss to amend the soil. I should mention that we used to have a lovely Bradford pear here, which was blown down in Hurricane Ike. It had been too shady for anything other than ground cover in the past, but with it open, we decided to turn it into a flower bed.


And then I planted it with five kinds of sage/salvia (they do very well down here), some ornamental grass, gaillardia, mini-zinnia, jasmine vines to cover the walls, and some herbs. We also put in a few rocks and mulched it.

Now hopefully everything will grow and look lovely by next year. The plants seem to be settling in well, so I think they'll be fine. We stuck in some cherry tomatoes and red bell peppers as well, mostly as an experiment.

Weeds, weeds, and more weeds! Also pulled by hand, then planted with three kinds of ornamental sweet potato vine for ground cover and mulched.

Couldn't find a good picture of the house before we had the trees trimmed, but it was pretty overgrown. Looks much more open with them trimmed up.