flowers.

some pretty purple flowers from the front flower bed. it's a shame i don't know what they're called... i got them at home depot this spring and guess i lost the tag. i think i'll snoop around the hd and see if i can find these again... unless anyone else knows what they are?

yard work.

okay, so i'm still on this gardening kick. it probably didn't help that i bought 2 gardening (landscaping and perennials) books last friday at our favorite used bookstore. last year i just randomly planted stuff without thinking much about the next year. well, i'm going to do it better this time around. i roughly measured our backyard this weekend and sketched everything on graph paper so that it would be to scale. i then redrew it all in illustrator so that i can easily make changes and plan plantings accordingly. one of the books said to divide your yard up and tackle one section at a time. this makes tons of sense. earlier, i was looking at the whole thing, thinking that i would never be able to get it the way i want it. well, i'm going to try!

everything should be pretty self-explanatory. the part labeled 'house' is actually the sun-room and the very back end of the kitchen. our main patio is brick and there is a ton of cement! The green is obviously grass and the brown patches are just dirt for now. (and actually, i lied... that very middle patch of green is just dirt right now, but we are trying to remedy that as i speak!) the dark green circles are evergreen trees/bushes and the lighter green circles are shademaster locust trees that we are trying to revive. our plan for the second patio is to build a pergola and keep our patio furniture and grill out there. 

our backyard right now looks so much better than it did when we first moved it, but there is lots of work still to be done. i plan on planting some shrubs and lots of perennials so that maybe next year, it's not quite so much work and there won't be dirt (and rock) patches everywhere. any thoughts, ideas or favorite plants? i keep finding things that i like and am browsing websites for more ideas...