The Beautification of the Backyard (Part 1)

So I was sitting outside on the kitchen deck enjoying the sun, resting with a book, and admiring the pale yellow centers of the baby pink bougainvillea bloom that was showing off right next to me.

My gaze moved to the vast expanse of "The Great Wall."

This is the view from the bedroom deck of the tail end of the far left wall, the middle, marigold wall, and part of the wall that is next to the stairs.

This is the view standing by the marigold wall looking down at the far left wall. These walls were built by my husband and son. The walls themselves were nearly finished four years ago before we left on Labor Day for our trip to the UK. ("The trip" has come to be known as the starting point of the kids' and my illness.)

My husband built the steps over the next summer or two. Last year, he put the flagstone down between the two stair levels and this spring he put top soil in the beds. All summer he "threatened" he was going to go pick out and bring home a bunch of plants to fill up the beds. Those kinds of threats usually get me moving, but any moving except trying to keep up with breadbaking, cooking, and doctor visits has been pretty non-existent. But this weekend looked to be different. Dh was off work from Thursday through Monday. Here was my "window" because of the extra help since he was home for longer then usual.

Yeah, we actually did it. Drum roll, please...

Excitement galore: Plants! Pretty Plants!

There has been an advantage to sitting outside and staring at those empty beds for so very many hours. I figured out what I wanted in them - well, in two of them anyway. I learned that walking into a nursery knowing what you want, is just as less agonizing as going to the video store knowing what you want. For once we came home from the nursery feeling a sense of accomplishment. No awful feelings such as "I think these will go somewhere," loomed while taking the plants out of the truck.

The gal who helped us knew her plants - sun needs, food and water needs, spring color, fall color, where they were located in the nursery, how many were left, if they were one sale, etc., so when I told her what I wanted - color, with a few evergreens, and a few perennials - she was right on it. You would have thought we were two old ladies out clothes shopping together we had so much fun. Dh found a wagon and gathered the selections. We found a place to line them up and look at them. How does that look? Do the colors go? Too much yellow? How should we accent? We looked at them at different angles, and hubby carted off what we didn't like. And do you know what? We came home with just what we needed.

The perennials will need to be purchased next spring. We're thinking of ornamental strawberries to grow down the bottom wall and a few catmint blues to intersperse in back of the yellow day lilies and pink roses. We hope to plant some bulbs this fall, too.

Okay, one bed down, two to go. Hmmph...tell that to the bank account. And let's not even think about the back fence. No, we can't even go there.

(P.S. Don't be fooled, the only work that I could contribute to the project was at the nursery, unless you count the supervision of the hole digging from my lawn chair.)