We had a gorgeous weekend, so Jeff and I both worked outside to get some more yard and garden projects done.  Jeff has actually been working in the yard almost every day.  He’s been a beast this spring!  Since we made so much progress, I thought I would share one more update on the garden for May.

One of the big projects Jeff took upon himself was edging and cleaning the curb.  Our house is on a “peninsula”, so we have a lot of curb!  Essentially, three sides of our property are edged with a curb.  When I worked on edging the front and side walks, Jeff suggested doing the curb as well, but I didn’t think it would be worth it.  Well, he’s been working at it for several days, and I definitely underestimated how sharp it would look.

He edged, cleaned up the street, and even power-washed the curb.  While he was at it, he power-washed the light post, which has been on my to-do list since we moved in!  It looks so nice and clean now.

I started early Saturday morning by filling some holes in our yard with garden soil.  We have rabbits that have dug some (currently inactive) holes that are potential ankle-breakers, so I hauled buckets of soil around and filled them in.  We’ll seed them in the fall, but at least we won’t have to worry about stepping in them.

I also hauled some compost to spread around the base of the Annabelle hydrangeas.  As I shared in my last garden post, these hydrangeas start strong, then look yellow and sickly as the summer drags on.  I’m not 100% sure it’s the right thing to do, but I figured it was worth raking some nutrient-rich soil around them to see if that helps.  I also fertilized them again with some HollyTone.   I raked the mulch back, added the compost, raked that in as best as I could, fertilized, and then watered it all in.  I will keep you posted!

As a side note, our contractor is building new window aprons to go under the two front windows since they are rotted.  We’re pretty competent at woodworking projects, but we want to make sure these are done properly and that any damage or rot that might be hidden underneath is addressed.  That should happen sometime this summer.

The Annabelle hydrangea on the other side of the front walk looks a little happier than the ones in front of the windows, and I’m not really sure why.  Hopefully, amending the soil will help.  If they look sickly again this summer, I’m going to move them and plant something else in front of those windows.

This front corner always makes me so happy.  I love the trellises and the bird house.

So, I really wanted to do some planting once I finished hauling bags of soil, which is decidedly not a fun part of yard work!  I hit a couple of garden centers on Friday, though, and came home with just two plants.  They had been pretty cleared out of perennials.  It seems I had waited a little too long to purchase plants this spring.  With Lucketts, graduation, visiting family, and work projects, I just didn’t have time to do it in May.

I decided to check out our local Home Depot, which has a wonderful garden center, and it came through!  They had Salvia, which was on my list, some bushes for my larger terracotta planters, and annuals for the patio.  Now, I could do some planting.

I’ve tried different plants in the concrete urns flanking our front door each year, and I decided on these SunPatiens this year.  They are supposed to do well in sun or shade.  Our porch is shaded, so they should do well.  They are supposed to get big, though, so we’ll see how they do in the planter.  I usually look around the garden center to see what plants are mixed into their ready-made planters, and I spotted these, so hopefully it’s a good choice.

Last year, I planted boxwood hedges in the front garden and tried some lavender (which didn’t like it there), so I wanted to start filling in some of the empty spaces with perennials this year.  I bought some salvia to plant between the liriope border and boxwood.  I’ve seen it in my neighbor’s yards, and it looks so pretty.  It’s lavender-ish and will do better in our clay-heavy soil.

I also bought a couple of varieties of thyme for some patio pots…

I bought some beautiful cone-shaped holly bushes for the pots last year for $40 each, which seemed so cheap for pretty big shrubs, but they didn’t survive the winter.  In hindsight, I should’ve done some research to see if they needed to be wrapped in burlap or something.  So, I was going to replace them with boxwoods, which have done well in other planters for a couple of years, but decided to go with yew.  We have a yew hedge in our yard, and they are so hardy.  They are supposed to be well-suited to pots, so we’ll see.

I put some annuals in the concrete planters along the brick wall as well…

While I was fiddling with soil and plants, Jeff power-washed the patio.  It looks so amazing!  I know it was a tough job because everything is heavy.  I apologized for my love of concrete.  I did point out that quality outdoor furniture and planters need to be heavy so they don’t blow over, but that’s little consolation when your back is sore from shuffling ridiculously heavy things your wife bought around all day.

We have never had a backyard that feels like a sanctuary, but this one really does.  It’s beautiful and peaceful, and I’m so proud of our hard work.

The hedge in the back, which we heavily trimmed earlier in May, is filling in nicely!

We’ve had an issue with visiting ducks, so we added a swan pool float and some inner tubes to float around the pool to deter them.  As cute as the ducks are, our pool is not a good home for them.  They are also messy guests!  Unfortunately, the floats have not discouraged them, and I have found the couple in our pool twice today!  We’ve ordered a falcon-shaped flag to try first and an inflatable waving man (which I could hardly believe I was clicking the buy button for that silly thing) as a backup measure, so hopefully one of those will work.

We haven’t had issues with ducks before, so it made me wonder if Sebastian’s presence was enough of a warning to potential visitors.  This is our first Spring without him.

Anyway, I also wanted to show how the bushes we trimmed back in the fall are doing.  We hard-prune the overgrown mock-orange bush, and it looks much happier!  It didn’t bloom this spring, but I didn’t really expect it to.  I’m hoping we get better, healthier blooms next year.  Sometime this season, I’ll clean up around the base and put some mulch around it in a nice circle to finish it off.

And here is the lilac we cut down to the ground.  It desperately needed it and is looking great.  We should get some nice blooms next year, which I’m excited about.  There was really no way to prune it last year and protect this year’s blooms.  It was half-dead and tangled in ivy, so it needed drastic pruning, and it will be better in the long run.

We still need to finish mulching in this area, but I haven’t wanted to order a couple of pallets of mulch until we have time to spread it.  That will probably happen in June.

Jeff trimmed the abelia hedge in the early spring, and it looks great, too!  We should see some little pink flowers soon.

This yard and garden have involved a massive amount of work, but I’ve learned so much in the process. Until recent years, I found gardening frustrating and unrewarding.  I started to enjoy it a bit more when we lived in Minnesota, but I’m coming into my own as I work on the landscaping for this house…