The "Landscaping 911" list

Dan and my idea of landscaping is to occasionally cut our thigh high grass to avoid pissing off our neighbors. It's not that we're just lazy. It's just that landscaping seems like an endless drain of time and money. There always seems to be way too many tools to buy (clippers, hedgers, tree saws, lawn mower, fertilizer, mulch, stones, rake, hoes, weird new garden forks, etc.). Mosquitoes mercilessly bite our arms and legs while we grunt and swear and sweat. We hate the flourescent lit, endless aisles of Lowe's and Home Depot. Even raking during autumn seems futile because the next week another blanket of rotting leaves will coat the ground.

This past week, however, we couldn't avoid doing landscaping any longer. If you haven't already read my last post, Dan and I had a real issue with the front of our house.

Chain saw + bushes= bad idea

Now that we were forced to do an emergency landscaping job, we actually ended up having a great time!

We stopped at an adorable local cottage and garden. I felt like we had stepped into some cozy nursery rhyme and kept looking for Old Mother Hubbard:

There were bushes that even made 6"2 Dan look small.

We saw plants that draped like exotic scarves,and ridiculous lawn ornaments (Mayan Cinco de Mayo party, perhaps??)
and even plants that reminded us of autumn and going back to school...

When we finally bought our bushes, we carefully loaded them into our cars like we were taking newborns home from the hospital. Dan even strapped one in the front seat, while I was booted to the back. Should I be jealous that I've been replaced?
Somehow we didn't get pulled over even with this set-up going on:
Fast forward five hours of digging holes, wrenching up old, slippery roots, planting, and mulching:
It's finally starting to look a little better!

Now we still want to...
* plant new bushes on the left side
* create flower boxes for each window
* outline the beds with white stones
* plant new grass
* paint the trim
* reshape azaleas by walkway

We're landscaping addicts!
I think we may end up longing for those long-gone lazy days of occasionally mowing our grass...