flowers

 I highly recommend this ground cover--Orchid Frost lamium. It's beautiful and spreads fast enough to fill in perfectly. And, it remains green all year round.

Exterior

This next weekend we are painting our house to get it ready to sell, and I am still worried about what color scheme to do. I know the basic color scheme, I just keep changing my mind about what exact color of beige I want-- one with more red in it? more gray? I'm leaning heavily towards this scheme though:

It's a very happy color... I know I want a light brown like color, with white windows (ours have panes, so they they will be white), possibly black trim around the windows (if I had shutters, they would be black), white railings on the porch, and a reddish-brown door. I'm going to paint the screen door as well, because it would be silly to have a reddish-brown door, with a big old white screen door in front of it. Disclaimer... my house looks nothing like the house in the above picture :)

What to do?

(scroll down for pictures--I promise it's not all words :) ) I am an ambitious person. I always have huge plans. Huge. Sometimes too huge... Especially with my yard. Take into consideration that when we moved in, the back yard was almost completely dead, with zero plants or trees. And the front yard had itty bitty flower beds that consisted of poorly taken care of, weed infested roses and an ugly fern thingy. So, what I've accomplished in three years is pretty amazing, if I do say so myself. As I was putting in plastic borders today in the back yard to keep the grass out of the gladiolas, I realized I'm exhausted, and I don't think I want to do much more yard work other than maintaining what I've already done. I had plans to put in more borders, but I feel so overwhelmed with everything else, I thought (this morning) that maybe I could call it good, and just concentrate on weeding and mulching.. what do you think?

 the dirt in this picture will be peas... I planted them late this year and they haven't yet come up. I'm considering moving the irises to an empty spot in the front yard.

 The raspberries. I still need to tie them up into nice rows. I was going to surround them with a plastic border to keep them from spreading, but the next owner can do that........right? You can barely see my lilac tree, to the right of the raspberries. It bloomed, and smells so good (last year it didn't bloom).

 This spot looks terribly ugly right now, along the fence. It is where I put in the plastic border today. It will have hollyhocks (which get to 10 ft tall!) all along the fence, and directly in front of the holly hocks are two rows of gladiolas (which get to about 3 feet tall and are gorgeous). Ryan still needs to finish staining the fence. That tree was a discount tree, and therefore has attempted to die. It's alive and thriving this year, just a little lopsided, lol.

 more of the hollyhocks.

 Ryan built this pergola, and one side has wisteria and the other has clamatis. they are still both itty bitty. plus irises on each side as well. You can also see the garden spot, as well as the spot directly in front of the garage door. I removed a ton of asphalt from that area, and a couple weeks ago we removed the dirt and brought in good dirt, and are going to be planting grass this week. I also planted a hosta on either side of the garage door.

 the front yard. The irises are finally starting to look nice that I planted along the neighbors driveway. The Dogwood is barely beginning to get ready to flower. I got ambitious a couple of weeks ago and (not knowing we were going to be moving) decided to kill another section of grass along the fence in order to plant gladiolas and ground cover. unfortunately the gladiolas were sold out, so I put in some phlox and daylilies. Hopefully they will pop up soon. And I transplanted my ground cover around it too, and put in some plastic borders.

 the mass of ground cover that i'm transplanting around the yard. I'm planning on putting some stepping stones (that I already have) where this ground cover is at the moment, so there will be a nice path to the back gate through the flowers. I had beautiful roses all around the porch, and they were just getting healthy and gorgeous by last fall... and then this winter was so cold that they did not fare well. They are still alive, but only the new shoots at the bases, not the bushes. it was so sad. I left them and hopefully in a couple months they will look decent.

 there are two hostas and some ground cover in the corner, and I think I'm going to transplant some of my lily of the valley to this corner as well. Then there are the tulips and poppies that you can currently see, and when they die off for the season we have phlox and irises. and my purple ground cover. that stuff is amazing, it spreads nicely, and flowers all summer long. plus, if you don't have a severely cold winter, it remains green all winter long.

another of the front gate. hopefully the flower will pop up quickly. So, I have tons of weeding to do. And I would like to put mulch everywhere to minimize the amount of weeding I have to do and to make the beds look nicer. Can I just call it quits after that?? I'll post pictures in a month or so when it's all in bloom.

Balanced Rock and other fun news.

We have definitely been keeping busy. We went on a camping trip to Balanced Rock in Idaho a couple weekends ago. The canyon we camped in was gorgeous.

Then there is the never ending housework, yard work, homework, and remodeling. Ryan received a very good job offer this last week for a controller position in Ontario OR, so in a week he will temporarily move in with Brandon and JaNae and commute home on the weekends until we can get the house ready to sell. We are very, very excited about this new adventure. Now comes the stressful part of getting the house ready, trying to finish and graduate by July, and everything else. But, we are soooooo very happy about this job. I literally started jumping up and down yelling when Ryan told me he got it. :)

 Ethan loves Brandon and JaNae very much. He was very excited when I told him we were moving closer to them. Almost made him forget about leaving his friends... but not quite. I decided to avoid the conversation and instead talk about happy things like his birthday party he wants that he has been talking about for a year.

 Ethan was sick and Violet wanted to cuddle. She was sick the week before. The joys of nursery--someone brought their kid to church sick and the whole nursery had the flu the rest of the week. I got it from Violet, and then Ethan got it. Today everyone is finally feeling better, hopefully Ryan avoided it.