In The Garden: Front Yard

We bought our townhouse in the fall of 2005, and the following spring I started the arduous task of cleaning up the front yard. A task that I continued working on for the next five years. To be honest, I'll probably never really finish the front yard. It seems to be a constant work in progress. Today I was looking back over my blog posts, and I ran across a post I did back in 2006 about beginning the clean up process. I can't believe how different the yard looks today compared to five years ago. Check it out.

This is what the front yard looked like in the spring of 2006 before I started digging.

And this is what it looked like after about eight hours of digging. See those little green plants lining the rock border I created? Believe it or not, I actually dug those out of the lawn. They're violets and were essentially weeds growing in the lawn. Nothing like a few free plants to make the garden look nice.

And this is what the front yard looks like today. Holy crap, Batman! Pretty incredible what a few plants and some time will do to transform a space. My cousin gave me the yellow and purple irises and one of my dear college friends gave me a few of the other plantings. Check out those bushy green plants lining the perimeter. Those are the same violets I dug out of the lawn back in '06. Amazing, huh?

In The Garden: Peonies

Every spring the most gorgeous peonies burst through the earth and envelop the light post outside our door. Everything about them makes me happy.

In the garden: spring cleanup and planting

Well, I finally found time to get in the garden and clean things up to make room for all the new growth sprouting away in my yard. Every year I am amazed by the shear number of weeds that pop up EVERYWHERE. It seems like I never get ahead of them. Last Friday, I made some major headway and I think my front flower beds have never looked better. I still have a lot of work to do, but I see real progress here. Here's a couple shots I took two weeks ago of the flowers I bought and one of the planters I placed some of them in.