In an effort to make myself feel better about not being able to dig and garden and plant, I was looking back through older posts here on the blog.  I realized that I had never updated last year after a local landscape company had come out to take a look at our property and give us an estimate of the work and the cost to draw up plans.  The reason I never updated about that is basically that the company I had called were apparently Really Hoity Toity Landscapers, and pretty much said that what we'd like to do would cost in the seven figure range.  No, that is not a typo.  Seven figures.  As in, over a million dollars. What.  The.  Eff. ?!   Naturally, after we picked ourselves up off the ground, we declined to move forward with the project.  LOL!  Not surprisingly, by the way, they wanted a couple thousand dollars just to draw up the plans. 

 

So, in the absence of a million dollars to spend on landscaping (hee, that still makes me laugh, a year later) I am left to do what I can do, largely by myself.   This is actually the last spring season I'll be able to put in long hours outside for few years, since of course the babies are on their way, so I'm impatient to get out there and get started!!   This spring I'm hoping to work a little  on the east wall of the house, which is the side of our family room.  We spend a lot of time in the family room so I'd like to have a nice view out those windows.  Right now it's basically bare next to the house, and the space is largely dominated by a mystery plant that has huge thorns and appears to be nearly unkillable.  I've dumped copious amounts of Round Up on it over the years and thus far nothing has even phased it, but I'm bound and determined to get rid of that thing once and for all this year!!   I'd like to add a few small-ish evergreens (36" height or so) to that area, and then some colorful plantings in front of them.   Depending on the progress of that area, I might also focus a little energy on the north facing "nook" made up of the back wall of our family room.  That area is damp and shady so I will be concentrating mostly on ferns and hostas there.  Easy, just time-consuming to get the area ready for planting.  Last but not least, I have a bunch of day lily and asiatic lily bulbs as well as some liriope to plant.  Those will fill in the south facing beds along the front of the house.

In other news:  there is actually a project taking place right now, as I write, but since we're not doing it ourselves I figured I'll wait to post pics until after it's done.  (Replacement of a couple of exterior doors, and getting a few new storm doors).