We've done a lot in two years and I'm thrilled!

Thrilled that the flowers in my front garden are finally blooming large enough to take cuttings and enjoy some indoors. I even harvested my lavender for the first time!

Which I've stuck into little containers in our bedroom and bath to keep things fresh.

I hate when it's so hot that you must have all the AC's on and no windows open to circulate the air!

When we moved in, we had no flowers.

We had no flower beds. What we had was a giant pine tree that dwarfed our little house, an ugly 1970's style shrub on the corner and some unkempt roses on a trellis over the garage.

In the two years since we bought our house, we have begun slowly changing the yard to make it our own. The first year we took down the pine tree and turned the area along the street into a bed.

We had very little money, so we didn't have much to fill the bed in with. A tiny ornamental pear tree, a few junipers, some candy tuft plants, lavender and beach grass. Oh and a large piece of driftwood husbando lugged off the beach for me. It was seriously sad, lol.

Little by little I have invested in a few perennials (mostly bought on clearance once they'd finished blooming for the season) And I've spent a lot of time transplanting.

Before we moved from our old house my mom and I took some of the zillions of day lillies I had growing there and moved them up to her house. We let them recouperate there for a season and have since been slowly bringing them back home to my house. In addition, I've harvested seeds from friends and family to acquire some silver dollar plants, black-eyed susans and a host of other flowers.

This is a quick look at a second bed that I put in along the side of my front yard. I called it my "freebie" bed. Everything in it was gifted from someone else's garden.

I've since expanded the bed and curved it around to meet the new bed that runs along the front of the house.

My mother-in-law has given me irises, tiger lillies, bee balm and several varieties of sedum.

I recently added the small stepping stone path made from a weird flagstone "patio" that was in our backyard when we bought the house. BEFORE:

I use quotes because seriously, do you see that silly area? It was at the base of our back porch but not even large enough to hold a grill muchless any furniture! AFTER:

The solar lights on the path were brought with us from our old house and the stones we are using to border the beds are being picked one by one by the members of my family and brought home from our many walks along the shores of RI.

So all in all, not much money invested. Just lots and lots of time!

It's still very much a work in progress- this year's big investment was three white hydrangea bushes that are so small my salvia virtually hides them from passers by! But I am patient and hopefully some day they will be 5 feet around and filled with gorgeous white blooms!

In the fall we hope to get the house painted. We were going to do it this summer, but it's just too dang hot out there! One final photo for you. A "then and now" shot of my front yard. What a difference two years makes!

Anyway, this has turned into quite the rambling post when I initially only started it to show you all my pretty little lavender bundles, lol!

Soon I'll take you on a tour of my insane vegetable garden in the backyard. I have mutant tomato plants. I swear it.

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My tiny little victory garden

Since we've always been renters, I've never had the opportunity to plant a garden of my own and so have become quite adept at container planting. This summer is our first full summer as homeowners and while I started out prepared to plant in containers again, I wound up deciding to do a small garden in the backyard.

I have been working on clearing out some extremely overgrown forsythia (as you can see in the below photo) and doing so gave me the perfect spot to plant some veggies.

When I say small, I mean small! This is a 4'x4' frame, but I think I've managed to make good use of it!

We have a row of Portuguese Hot Peppers

Burpless Cucumbers

Three different tomatoes- an Early Girl

a Sun Gold Cherry

and a Patio Tomato

and a row of Green Bell Peppers


And because I've heard rumor that planting different herbs too near each other will make them start to take on each others flavors, I decided to stick with containers for my two basils.

My African Blue

and my Sweet Basil (still need to get one more plant for this pot)

This is all stuff we eat with regularity, so I figured best to start with what I know. if I am successful this summer, I think I'll double the size next year to include some lettuce, a few more tomatoes and maybe some melons of some sort...

I've also been working on a new flower bed. This entire bed (save for the two sunflowers I bought for $1 a piece) is made up of freebies given to me by my mom and mother in law. I've got Day Lilies, Iris, green and variegated Sedum, Coreopsis, Tiger Lilies, Lupine and Bee Balm. I call it the scraggler garden because it's sort of just a mishmash of stuff all plopped together. But I am patient and in a few years it will fill in and look lush and lovely! (Now if I could only get my weeds grass to grow in!)

And finally I leave you with a photo of a pretty yellow flower growing in my window box. I have no clue what it is- I got an 8 pack at Home Depot for $1.88 and there were none with tags that had names, lol! They bloom in red, magenta, yellow and white. Anyone have any idea what it is?


And a final reminder! Today is the last day to enter my $40 CSN Stores gift certificate giveaway!

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What are these lovelies growing in my yard?

We bought our house last summer and by the time we moved, painted and settled in, basically everything in our yard had already done it's thing and we figured we'd wait until this spring to start doing the guessing game as to what was growing around the property. These are some pretty flowering somethings I have in my backyard. One is a bush, one a tree and then the little plant thing I have no clue if it's a planting or a weed. Can anyone help me out?

The tree has these wonderful, rich magenta colored flowers with burgundy leaves.


This bush has teeny tiny little white flowers cascading down the branches. My mother thinks it "bridal" something or "wedding" something but can't recall.



And this- bee balm? It's the only thing that even remotely comes across my mind when I look at it but I don't think they grow in quite such a clump do they?...

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