Spring Projects in Process

We've had really odd weather here for the last week or so, that's kept me inside every day.  It's been very cloudy, very very windy, and quite cool.  Our temperatures haven't been above the low 60's for days now.  I've kept the windows open and the A/C off to get all the fresh air I can, and I'm still wearing long pants! Rain threatens every day, but so far we haven't seen any since Sunday.

Sunday our yard work was cut short by a torrential storm that lasted all day long and most of the night.  James was literally digging below, expanding the flower bed at the garage, when it started raining so hard we had to come inside.  He was almost finished, and we're almost ready to go get a truckload of soil and get on with planting.

Our project from the previous weekend below, is now completely in my hands.  James did his part, all the heavy lifting, digging it all up and then preparing it with a load of soil.  I spent an afternoon putting the pavers down as edging, but when I look at it from the house, you can't even see the pavers they are so low.  So I'm going to raise them.  Next weekend when we go to Knoxville for Mother's Day, we will be bringing back several of the azaleas from his grandmother's old home, and maybe some of her bulbs too.  We will put at least two or three of the azaleas here at the mailbox.

   

Lowe's had all their pavers and bricks on sale for 20% off, plus we used our Lowe's credit card to get an extra 5% off.  We decided to go ahead and take on a few unplanned projects as well, and bought a whole pallet of the pavers.  Our main flower beds in front of the house, the ones the builders put in, have a tendency to wash away over the sidewalk whenever it rains.  We bought enough pavers to go ahead and line the beds to hold everything in.  Plus we think it will look really nice and "finished".  Not much to do here, except to just put them in and make sure they are level.  This will be my job, to work on brick by brick, as I can.

The last new project for the spring will be the bed below.  It's sort of overgrown with all the shrubs the builder threw in there, and I haven't worked on this bed very much over the years.  I've planted very few bulbs, and a hydrangea, that's it.  I've let it get way too shaggy, and we think we picked up enough pavers that we can put them down here as well.  We plan to expand the bed in the front further out into the yard.

We don't have many spring bulbs planted, ours are mostly summer bulbs.  But the irises I got from my mother-in-law are blooming right now, and we've been able to enjoy them, even from the window on days like today when I don't go outside.  I have a ton of bulbs in the garage right now that I need to get in the ground.

Our new trees continue to do well, I think they like this cool and cloudy damp weather, but not so much the strong breezes- they are staked but the wind always looks like it's beating these guys to death.  We've had a few minor broken branches already, but they will have to get used to it- the wind is always blowing hard up here on "the hill" where we live.  Later on in the fall, we'll create giant flower beds to encompass all the trees, instead of just the little patches of mulch you see now.

It's supposed to rain for the next few days, so I'm not sure we'll be able to get out there this weekend and finish anything.  But now that I'm staying home, I have more than enough time during the week to work on everything.  If my old back can hold up through all of it!