We've Made our Bed

Happy December everyone!

Before I take you on a tour of our Christmas-fied, gingerbread like house I want to talk Spring.

I know it may seem odd to talk Spring before Christmas BUT apparently Fall is THE best time to plan for Spring planting, so we've had some serious front yard prep work to do before we decked our halls this year. After removing the giant Christmas Tree this summer we were left with a large center island needing some love.

We have a rock path, rock steps and stack stone around the flower bed, but for some reason only one side of the bed was outlined in the stack stone. This type of non-symmetrical weirdness became widely more apparent with the tree gone. The bed was naked and all it's flaws were hanging out for all to see. 

We took some photos of our existing stack stone and headed to the "rock store" to pick up the stone needed to finish off this bed.

These rocks look innocent enough, but they were HEAVY. One of my jobs during this process was to help unload the rocks from the truck and then transport them to and fro the flower bed. 

BACK.ACHE.CENTRAL.

Before I carried them over we first had to dig a trench around the flower bed.

I started off in charge of this part, while Brent dug up yet another stump....

Random, super apparent flaw #2. 

Brent dug up that stump only to find me 1/4 of the way through my trench digging. He took over...Womp Womp. Truth is I'm too ADD to dig a trench, plus there were roots everywhere from the stupid Christmas tree and my shovel kept getting tangled. ANYWAYS.....

With the trench dug we were ready to mix up the Quikrete...

And begin laying the stone. We dug the trench and laid the stone to follow the curve of the bed. Because the bed slants upwards we changed the elevation of the stone 3 times. 

Installing the wall was relatively fast paced and before we knew it we had a complete rocked in flower bed, with no stumps and no ginormous Christmas tree. Things were looking up. 

Next, we headed to the nursery to figure out what in the world to plant in this giant bed. After taking wayyy too much of a nice worker's time we ended up with azaleas, pansies and tulips. 

It looks simple now, but we are hoping all of our hard work will pay off and this bed will explode with color and interest come Spring!

All photos are my own.