Someone should tell the plants that winter isn’t over quite yet.
All things related to landscaping, yard work, flowers.
Friday, Dave had 10 yards of mulch delivered. He spent all day Friday and most of the day Saturday distributing it through out various plant and tree beds.
He really wore himself out getting this done. He did it all in just two days, and the yard looks excellent! We were overdue for mulching the beds. Kudos to Dave for getting it done!
We started our morning by dropping E&A off at the airport. So sad to see them go!
Then we pulled up all the pansies from the front beds and put them into boxes to give them to Krista, my new FreeCycle friend. It took about 45 minutes to pull them all up but I’m glad we didn’t just throw them away.
After that, we got into the planting. We planted mixed zinnias and mixed gazanias in the front beds to the right of the front porch. 
Along the walkway on the left side of the porch, we planted yellow, orange, and bronze marigolds. I have a killer sunburn on the small of my back. Stupid Jeni.
We had a few gazanias left over, so I planted them in two pots that went on the back porch. Finally, flowers on our back porch! I got to use my Colombian pot, the handmade terracotta pot on the higher step. I carried this pot back in my lap when I came back from Colombia. I treasure it. 
Sunday morning, after a big breakfast of pancakes, meat and eggs, we headed off to the Farmer’s Market. Dave and I were searching for flowers to install in our front beds. We’re pulling up the pansies on Monday and replacing them with Zinnias and Marigolds. They should look pretty. We’re looking forward to the new summer flowers. 
Saturday morning we went to the Farmer’s Market, and returned home with two 1-gal. Jasmines, some assorted plants for front-porch pots, and two large hanging plants for the front porch. So pretty! We also got fresh tomatoes, white “Jersey” sweet potatoes and strawberries. We got the front-porch pots and the jasmines planted on Saturday before heading downtown to Artsplosure at 4. 
I also stopped by Expressions and picked out the fabric for my chair. This is not, I repeat, not my chair, but it does give a good idea of how my chair will look. Except my chair will have pink welt cord!! I’m so excited. It surprised me how much I like this fabric, but it’s a perfect match for the colors in the rug, and it won’t compete with the florals in the rug, and it’s not solid which is boring. I am very excited and hope to see my new chair in about 45 days. 
We planted some dahlia’s and mums in our back bed. We dug down deep and built up the bed using stones as a border.
We were exhausted but happy with our efforts!
Dad got some more mulch layed out today – there’s only a little bit left to distribute.
Monday we had 10 yards of mulch delivered to our driveway. Dave and his dad spent a few hours in the afternoon spreading it around the flower beds.
I, of course, took it easy. 
Dave’s Dad arrived on Saturday afternoon, and we put him right to work when he got here!
We had a rather big project but it went fairly smoothly. We started around 4 and finished up around 6:30 PM.
We have a fairly extensive bird feeder system out back of our house, and the azalea bushes below the feeders were getting covered in bird poop. We also had some of the bird seed spouting in the mulch under the bushes which we always had to pull out by hand. It was annoying and didn’t look very good, so we decided to relocate the azalea bushes to a different part of the bed.
Here’s what they look like in their new location:
We had to take several breaks during the transplanting process so that the bluebird mommy and daddy could come back to the bluebird house and feed the babies.
After we moved the azalea bushes, we filled in the holes where they were and covered the area with gravel. We’re hoping the multicolored gravel will hide the bird poop better and prevent the seeds from being able to germinate. 
Later this week, we’re going to get more mulch and pretty it up a bit so it doesn’t look so severe.
