The After: Front Flowerbed Edition

I am proud to announce that the front flowerbed project is complete and was a huge success!

This first photo is a portrait of our well-prepped slate. Preparing the bed was no small task and took two evenings to complete. There were so many rocks, big and small, and cleaning them out ate up most of our time. First we loosened up the dirt in the bed (with hand trowels), then leveled out the old dirt before mixing in twenty bags of compost soil.

Ready and waiting....

The next few shots are of the "design" process. If you remember from a few nights ago, our assortment of plants was plentiful and varied. Considering neither Casey nor I have any real experience creating a flower bed we just started with a few plants and kept adding and moving and adding and moving and taking away and moving and moving and adding and taking away and moving and adding and....I think you're getting the picture now.

God bless my amazing husband for putting up with me. He didn't know the names of any of the plants and I think I only knew the names of three of the kinds of plants when the process began, so it was quite amusing to listen to us. I even said to him at one point someone should be videotaping this because it was that funny.

I would say, "Okay, now take that Mexican heather from the back row and switch it with the orange daylily." And, he would look at the bed and see no back row or orange flower (the daylily hadn't bloomed). So, he would walk to the bed and move the salvia and azaleas and I would say, "No, the other purple and green plant honey. And that hot pink flower is not a daylily."

At that point I would walk to the bed myself and switch them, then step back and say, "No, that's not right. Honey, will you move the azaleas to the other side of the yellow flowers?" And, he would look at the bed puzzled again, because there were no yellow flowers to be seen (they hadn't bloomed yet either and were actually green, but I couldn't remember their name....and still can't....so I just dubbed them "the yellow flowers" because I knew that's what they'd be once they bloomed).

I did ask Casey if he wanted me to go down the row naming the flowers so he would know what I meant and we did, but apparently the names didn't stick. So, after a good thirty minutes of this back and forth with the plants we FINALLY came up with an arrangement we liked.

Oh, and don't worry about the twenty bags of mulch lying on the ground...we only used three....we're beginners remember....

Pre-burial.

Just look at that beautiful symmetry.

More beautiful organization.

The plants we returned (there were a lot...beginners).

I begged him to smile...he was really tired, sweaty, and thirsty.

And, drum roll please......dudududududududududu......

TA-DA!

TA-DA!

Wonderfulness.

When I arrived home today after school the first thing I did was take a stroll in the yard with Gabe enjoying my beautiful flowers. Then, I went and got my gloves and smoothed out the mulch in some places which gave Gabe the idea that it was okay to jump in the mulch and throw a little mulch party with himself. And, that my friends is why while we were slaving away in the bed last night....

...Gabe was in this.

He played so very well by himself. Every once in a while he would call out, "bup? bup?", which means up. One of us would turn around and say, "Not yet, buddy." To which he would reply, "You're a jerk." and then sit back down and play some more.

Just kidding about the jerk part...he did usually protest for a bit when we said no, but really it didn't last long at all. Around 8:15 we were beginning to wrap things up and he was getting pretty tired. He fussed a little and then just laid down in the bed and I think if he'd had just five more minutes in the pack n play he would have gone to sleep right there under the big starry sky.

Wouldn't that have made for an adorable picture?

Hope you've enjoyed the process along with us. I enjoyed it enough to tackle the backyard flowerbed.

Two springs from now.

Just kidding.

Sort of.

How about one spring from now?