I think I mentioned earlier this week I had picked up some new plants to fill in on what was left to plant. I picked up three hostas and three ferns. Growing up, my mom was always working in the yard and we always had flowers and plants. However, we also always had sun, and lots of it. We never even looked at shade plants because we didn't have any shade to plant in. When Andrew and I bought this house and realized most of the yard is shade, I was a bit perplexed as to what I was going to plant. I knew I could plant hostas in the shade, but that was all I had for ideas. Through much research, I found several plants that are shade lovers; although, I think I'm becoming a bit of a hosta collector. I find myself at the store reading the tags on hostas to determine if I have that variety. There are thousands of different hostas out there, and I would love to have as many as possible in our yard. While I was at Lowes early this week, I picked up three new varieties of hostas, and three ferns to try out.
While I was trying to arrange my new plants, I ran into two issues that were cramping my design style. The drain pipe for our sump pump runs through the side yard, and the tree roots from the tree in the back yard are massive and everywhere. I was able to work around both though, and was happy with how things turned out. Here is the side yard all finished up:
It may appear in the top photo that there is still more space to plant things, but don't let the photo fool you. That is right up next to the tree, and I'm not messing with any more of those roots. The tree wins the battle over planting more things. I have a little more room for some ground covers, so I will probably fill in at some point. If I can score some good deals at the end of the season like I did last year, that is probably how I will go about doing it. I know it may look like I still have a lot of room in there to plant things, but I like to be a patient gardener and wait for things to grow. We have three hostas in the front yard that I actually need to space out at some point because when they were planted they were planted right next to each other and now they are a little too close.
While I was working on planting, Andrew was moving our compost pile around a little bit. The pile we had created was a bit untamed, so he was working on containing it a little more. When he finished moving it, we realized we had some very lovely black dirt where the pile used to be. When I said growing up we had nothing but hot sun to plant in, we also had nothing but clay in the yard to plant in, which is less than ideal for growing anything. So, buying this house and having a shovel go right through the rich black dirt was a bit of a treat. In one hole alone yesterday, I encountered two or three earthworms. When I think about leaving this house, I'm not sure I would want to leave the dirt behind. I know these days when they build, they tend to haul off the top layer of dirt, which generally only leaves clay depending on where you are around here. I have to say I rather enjoy digging in my rich soil. Now that we have one project "done" in the yard, we have about fifty more to go. Right now, we are trying to prioritize the project list. Before the end of this growing season, we would like to have a spot prepared in the back yard for a garden, so we can get out first thing next year and plant that. We also have a weed situation we would like to get under control, landscaping to do in the back corner of the back yard, landscaping on the other side of the deck, an extension on the front landscaping, and work on the side yard that is outside the fence. That is only the list of outside projects, we have a growing list of indoor projects as well.
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