Courtyard Happenings

Our courtyard is pretty much finished, there are only a few small details left like rerouting down spouts and installing a drip system. You know boring stuff that only helps it function better. So we still have important things to tackle with the courtyard. We only now have realized just how bad the down spouts are. We knew they all came down into the courtyard, but we never get rain here and it never mattered before. Now that we have beautiful plants filling up the space we see just how big the problem really is. Last week we got a half inch (yes half an inch) of rain and it drowned the courtyard. We had plants completely under water and we had mulch floating from one side of the courtyard to the other.


It was fairly stressful. We had to even put a board over some of the plants because they were getting pummeled by water from one of the down spouts. The rose bush next to the house took a beating, but there wasn't much we could do. So at some point we will be getting to that issue.

The other issue that we realized over the last couple of weeks that needs addressing, is the lack of a drip system to water the plants. Now that we finished planting the courtyard and front area, watering has become a chore. It takes me between 30 and 45 minutes every morning to hand water everything. We have also been watering 2 times a day to help establish all the new plants, so it takes a lot of time out of the day.

Add those to our To Do List.

There are some other exciting and odd things going on in the courtyard. First is that the rose bushes are flowering more vibrant and larger roses. We think this might be due to them finally becoming established but I happen to find it odd. This is the same rose bush and the color seems to be getting darker.

I dont have any problem with this because I happen to love the dark peach color flowers that the bush is now producing.  I am pretty much in love with roses now.

Things have been growing so well in the courtyard.

It's amazing how much these plants have grown in a month. I have decided however, that I am not a fan of foxgloves. It might be too hot here but their flowers don't last long. Those are definitely not making a return to the courtyard.

Front yard continued

For the 4th of July weekend we did a bunch of work on the front yard. We bought a ton of flowers for under the tree with a birthday gift card. Thanks Alta! From far away you can barely see them.

Up close though you get a great view.

You can see in this picture that we still have a lot of work to do under the tree to clean up the branches that had grown from the bottom. We also had not planted the 2 front flowers yet they are still in their pots in this picture.  We are still trying to figure out what we really want in the very middle. I am starting to think that we should just buy 3 more of the tall blue flowers and call it a day. They are agapathus if you are wondering.

Here are the flowers from the walkway side. It looks so lovely and welcoming with so many flowers. We can't wait for them to get bigger.

Geoff and I went to a local nursery and found a ton of fun plants for the yard. The best part was that they were 99 cents a plant. we got our rock garden ground cover plants, and a bunch of plants for our front window area. Here is a shot of part of the rock garden. I haven't taken a wide shot of the finished product yet.

This morning we worked on the front window area. We started and finished it today in a few hours. It was a tough job, we had to remove all the gravel which was mixed with dirt that was about 5 inches deep. Shovel by shovel we removed the mixture and sifted the gravel. Placing the nice clean dirt back into the area which took us around 2 hours. After levelling the area we added garden soil and started placing large rocks and our new plants. It turned out a lot better than I was expecting.

Its hard to tell in these pictures with the shadows but there are alot of plants in this area. We went with a more natural looking planting, with all the rock and randomly placed plants.

I need to get a couple more pictures of the area but its done! We finished all the plant areas of our front yard. Now we just have probably the hardest area left which is everything in front of the tree. We need to remove all of the old bark, lay down a ton of weed guard, gravel and add a flagstone walkway. It's definitely the most time consuming and hard labor project for the front yard.  Hoping we can get it done sooner than later.

Starting on the front yard

We continued our landscaping projects by moving to the front yard. It has been something we have really wanted to tackle since we moved in. Our curb appeal is pretty terrible and we are the house right in the middle of our cul-de-sac, so when you drive down our road you stare at our house the whole way. We started last week by tackling the small project of clearing out a section of flower bed next to the walk way. We decided to make a rock garden and continue the gravel into front yard area. We cleaned out the area and then replaced the weeds with a weed guard, clean gravel and rocks from the ranch to add interest.

We are planning on planting some ground cover plants here to add some interest and color. A couple of days later we created a tree ring with some rocks from the ranch. We wanted to plant flowers under the tree and raise the level of the ground around it so that the roots would actually be covered.

Also cutting out all of the bush at the bottom to make it an actual tree and open up the space some more. Yay for being able to see the house.

There are still large branches at the bottom that need to be sawed off  and we are still cleaning up the base of the tree but its a great start. Just removing the old bark and the random tree branches has been a huge improvement.