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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Work In Progress Wednesday, Week Five

This week is all about outdoor stuff.

We've been digging up the giant roots of these forsythia bushes. They were overgrown, not pruned properly by the previous owners and didn't flower like they should anymore- so we decided to rip them out.

The plan is to put in some lovely emerald green arborvitae trees along the fence and then in front of that will be our new vegetable garden area.
We are digging these up by hand.

Which is why it's not finished yet.

And I'm stalled out because of this

And YES, I had gloves on (everyone is asking me that)

We also did the gutters.

See that pretty green MOSS growing on the facia board under where the malfunctioning gutters were?

We also had to replace 70 feet of rotted board.

Progress, progress.

At least now the house is ready for power washing and then (hopefully) paint! (it is such a barren, bland eyesore, I feel like I should be on one of those shamed-into-working-on-my-yard TV shows!)

What are YOU working on this week?

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We finally finished the patio!

When we moved in a year ago this was our back yard and porch


And then the first weekend we started this project in August- we had NO IDEA what we were getting into


and perhaps you remember my post about the black cherry tree which halted our progress?

Then finally, the excavation was finished, the cherry mess was cleared away and the brick laying began


The patio project also included the task of taking down the small red stairs that led on and off the porch and removing the railings to make a wrap around staircase so the porch was open to the patio, instead of blocked off and disconnected looking


So yesterday morning, best friends in hand, we finally finished with our project- just in time for fall, lol!




The finished project! I know it's not any award winning backyard makeover like you see on TV, but we did it ourselves- with the help of good friends and it is exactly what we wanted for our lifestyle. Our backyard is now a useable space for our family!

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Slow progress with the patio and a heartfelt thank you

First off, I'd like to thank everyone who commented and emailed me when we lost Errol last week. He was really the best little doggy (and I'm not even a dog person, lol!) We miss him terribly but are so blessed that he was a part of our lives for 7 years.

Now on to other things. I posted previously that we were installing a patio in our backyard. We did fine on the excavation, though it was slow because we did it all by hand.

After our 3 day weekend, we put in a few hours each night when Ed got home from work and finally had the ground cleared out to a depth of 7 inches and the string lines all run and levelled, etc. Ed picked up a rented plate compactor on Friday (the 13th, should have known better!) and when he pulled the cord to start the engine, the cord came off in his hand and the thing was busted. And of course the rental place was closed all weekend long.

So instead of something like this going on

I started looking a little like this

To get on with my story, for around $60, we bought 2 hand tampers from Home Depot and we began the long and painful job of compaction by hand.

All in all, it's not a difficult or skilled process, but for those who don't know, this is an 18'x20' patio with a 3'x8' walkway- which has been dug to 19'x21' to allow for the plastic edging we have to put in. This is the scale drawing I did when we were initally mapping out our plans

Needless to say it took hours to do each layer.

First we compacted the ground. Then we laid a 2" layer of gravel and compacted that.

Then we began our second 2" gravel layer. At which point, we began to realize that the 40 foot tall black cherry tree in our backyard was seriously dropping some cherries into the gravel- a problem not only because it will affect laying the bricks, but a finished patio would wind up covered in cherry stains!

So after talking it over, we decided to call an arborist and have him come check out the tree.

Which turned into this

And this

and this

and also this

and finally this



My yard looks like a warzone and I am about to go outside with a leaf blower to try to get all the cherries into one area so I can get them off of the gravel.

I am beginning to feel like this is the patio that will never get done.

Oh btw, the rental place DID give us our money back, plus a 20% discount on a future rental- which will come in handy when we decide to rent a wet saw for cutting tiles when we redo our bathroom... (don't freak, honey, I'm not saying it's on the to do list -yet- one thing at a time!)

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