Transforming our back yard.

I spent about 7 hours working on our backyard yesterday. We moved into our house when it was new, last May. We put in a lawn and patio last year but no plants in back. Come spring, I had two large plant beds with humongous weeds in it. I got those mostly weeded and went to the nursery to get some plants. I spent about 1 1/2 hours there. It was the coolest nursery I've ever been to. They had TONS of stuff and it was divided between sun loving, shade loving, evergreen, etc. And everything looked healthy! Amazing.

Anyway, it was a 20 min. drive there and it was the most B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L drive ever. For those who've been here, it was the stretch from Maple Valley to Isaaquah on Isaaquah-Hobart road. It's a windy road in the middle of the country, but this is hilly, mountainous country with trees everywhere. It almost makes me never want to move, it's that pretty here.

I filled up my minivan with 2 trees: a Korean Dogwood and a Royal Raindrop Flowering Crabapple. I also got 3 hydrangeas with blue flowers and 2 azaleas with pink flowers for the strip against the house. And for the larger section along the back fence I got a "Miss Kim" lilac bush, a sand cherry, 3 small Euonymus, and 2 little green bushes that get flowers on them (I can't remember what they are and it's wet outside so I'm not looking. lol).

Had I only needed to plant them all, I would have been done by now. But when we put in the lawn last year we weren't sure what we wanted to do for landscaping so the bed against the house is only 3 feet wide and I need to make it 4 feet. And we did a bed along the back fence at about 4 feet wide, all the way across (about 50-60 feet). We are changing that to just have a small bed for the tree and some flowers or something in one corner, then putting lawn in for 15 feet or so, and then a bed that's 5-6 feet by 32 feet. And I'm making it wavy so it's not a straight boring line. This is taking me forever. I have to transplant the lawn from the spots I don't want it, to the spot where I do want it now. And the area we're putting the lawn into is much too high so I'm taking that dirt off and putting it where the beds are. Oh my aching back!! I'm taking before and after pics and will post when it's done. Hopefully within the next week or so.