Let's garden!

My arms and lower legs ache, I'm tired, and my comfy bed is calling me Right Now -- but I just gotta say: we have achieved launch with my yard/garden projects!

After a lovely, relaxed spring break from homeschooling, this weekend we hefted the garden tools and literally dug into the boring, sort of pathetic dit-dot-dit row of plants in our front entryway garden bed. The leaves dropped by our oak tree in January have been raked out of the bed. The five sad little bushes have been trimmed to little stubs and dug out of their abodes. Dear husband even removed all of the annoying landscape lights, and we found a wayward Superball deep in one of the little bushes.

Have I mentioned how incredibly great it is that Son1 and Son2 are old enough to participate in household projects in ways that HELP? If it were only dear husband and me doing this, there would still be big piles of leaves in our garden beds and hunks of bushes all over the walkway... OR, we two grownups would be rather more grumpy and ready for bed right now. Thanks, boys.

Next task: dig up and move two liriope to join the other two in the bed below the bay-like front window. Then fill the row of five holes and prep that bed. Place two concrete pavers to support the legs of a rustic wooden bench, and put the bench in place. This is my to-do list for tomorrow afternoon.

While messing around out there this week, I want to (as planned a couple of years ago) change the front garden bed shapes. I'm going to un-curve the line of concrete edgers to make room for a little sitting area in the 'L' of the garden beds -- wahoo! -- a little planting space in front of the happy, healthy boxwoods, and general making-more-sense-ness throughout.

I have plans for the narrow space behind the variegated liriope, and the even narrower space in front. These plans require plant acquisitions (hint: deep green verticality behind, low colorful flowerishness in front). I need a groundcover under the bench, partly to help keep the soil off the walkway. I think I'm going to move the burgundy daylilies from their too-sunny spot around the corner, and install them in front of the lovely, green, happy boxwoods. Maybe I'll plant something wild and crazy in their old place to climb up into the I-forget-what shrub that wants to be 12 feet tall. I'm thinking... zucchini! Or maybe pole beans. It'll complement the big pot of tomatoes I've planned for a bare space in the garden bed at the outer end of the entryway; this year I intend for plans to become reality at last. Enough with the thinking already!

Shall we go plant and seed shopping tomorrow before dinner, or perhaps after lunch on Tuesday?!?