A Manicured Landscape

In front of my tuscan-colored home, we have a beautiful lawn and a bricked in garden area. For as many years as I can remember our garden area was occupied by ground-cover with a few shrubs for accent. It was overall to green, with not much color.

I learned earlier in the year when I was told to cut back the ground cover, as you must from time to time, I was allergic. I broke out in hives after touching it. All the more reason to rip it out and beautify the space with mulch and perennials.

This year, I got the first 2 steps complete. Over the course of a few hours here and there I had removed all the ground cover (wearing gloves to prevent the hives of course). I then raked the soil evenly and filled it in with mulch. Next year, I plan to accent the shrubs we have with pot of annuals, in a red/orange/yellow color scheme to compliment the butter color of our brick.


On the right side of the house (pictured above), I was able to get some perennials (mums) in the ground and a new red rhododendron planted. The rhododendron will have red flowers in the spring/summer, while the mums will remain green until late summer/fall. This will provide a great burst of color to this side of the house throughout the year and will compliment our existing japanese maple nicely. I had intended to plant an annual where the white alyssum is now this year, but the alyssum came back from the previous year even though it wasn't supposed to. Next year it will be an annual in red, orange or yellow.




This year, I will plant some tulip and daffodil bulbs on the left side (pictured above) of the house to provide spring color before the pots are completed for the year. 1-2 dark red mums may also still be planted on the left.

I am very excited about the clean look of my front yard and was even more thrilled when my aunt, a master gardener, complimented the "groomed, manicured" look of my yard!

Snippets From Summer

I have been extremely busy lately, hence the lack of updating! So I figured I would put together this one post with small snippets of what I have been up to lately.

My mom and I took a short, but much needed vacation to Traverse City & Mackinaw City, MI. We had a great time touring wineries, visiting lighthouses - including light spotted on Shepler's Lighthouse Cruise out of Mackinaw. My favorite part of the trip was my parasailing adventure. Thanks to the Traverse Bay Parasailing Co. I got to soar 1200 ft. in the air, taking in a breathtaking view of the Grand Traverse Bay.

After that short summer vacation, I have been extremely busy working on the yard every weekend! My hard work has paid off and my yard is looking beautiful! There is only one side that will need updates next year, along with garden art shopping. I'll be writing up more of my Gardening Adventures series with these changes to come.

September has brought on even more craziness to my busy life, as I take on another dance class and the Dale Carnegie Course! So far I'm having a great time at both classes.

The first weekend (Labor Day) in September was also spent doing lots of fun activities. Each Labor Day the Mackinac Bridge is open to walkers, usually some 50K people walk the 5.6 mile journey across the 3rd largest suspension bridge in the world, right her in our great state of Michigan. I have walked the bridge several times, and not only did I walk the bridge, but I pushed my mom in her wheelchair the entire way! I'm glad I she could enjoy it without walking as she could in the past!

Gardening Adventures

Lou Erickson once said "Gardening requires lots of water - most of it in the form of perspiration."

As a recent graduate from the school of gardening, this quote couldn't be more true. Until recently, I never realized how challenging and time consuming maintaining our outdoor space was. And, as it turns out, I have discovered that I have quite the green thumb. In my "Gardening Adventures" posts, follow my journey as I transform my yard into a much more beautiful space.

My gardening lessons began out of necessity this year. I've had to take on the challenging role of "the family gardener," and it has been quite the job. Having the mastered keeping the grass cut and fertilized last summer, my first challenge was presented after we removed out pool: Growing New Grass. Last summer when a storm blew through, we simply bought some sod to replace a large area of grass. This summer sod was not in the budget, so grass seed it was. I assumed this would be a piece of cake: buy some grass seed, put it down, watch it grow. Wrong. After putting the grass seed down, the birds quickly ate at most of it and weeds quickly filled my newly laid topsoil. I had to spend 2 weekends weeding the area and laying Patchmaster. I learned that this had to be watered twice a day for about 2 months now for beautiful grass to fill in. (I'm also still weeding it weekly.)

Our vegetable garden was my next backyard challenge, which resulted in a 50% success. I began by planting tomatoes, cucumbers, green peppers and green beans. My tomato plants and green pepper plants flourished - there have been many stir-frys and tomato salads for dinner! However my cucumber plants and green beans didn't fare as well. The cucumbers fell victim to garden rabbits who promptly dug them up after I had planted them. My green bean plants were producing tons of green beans, enough for several dinners, until my dog Snickers ate the beans from the plant. in the process she had chewed the plant down so badly, it died. Lesson learned: place all plants in cages to protect from backyard pests!

Stay tuned for more of my Gardening Adventures!