Saturday, April 5, 2008

Landscaping

Today we finally started actually planting things! YEAH! So far this is the favorite part of the house building process for me. I love playing in the dirt with plants. I am not very good at it, but I still like to do it.

We finally got all the topsoil spread out and the flower beds laid out where we want them. The one by the driveway is a half circle, hard to tell because my spray lines are worn off, but that is what it will be once the grass is in. By the way, we also put down ferilizer and grass seed today, so please keep your fingers crossed that we have some green stuff growing in the yard soon!

In the bed in this picture we planted, a Hoops Blue Spruce (it was actually our x-mas tree from '06), a Lion's Head Japanese Maple and a Weeping Eastern White Pine. Hopefully the poor little blue spruce doesn't go into shock from finally being out of its pot. The intention with the weeping pine is to get some interesting rocks to stack under the weeping part of it to help hold it up, then I will "train" it (force it whatever you want to call it) to grow/weep along the driveway edge! Warning, I always have huge plans for my landscaping but only about 1% of the plans actually work out. I will keep you posted.

Closer of the same bed...
A different shot of the same bed...
We also planted a Melrose Semi-Dwarf Apple, a Elizabeth Magnolia and a Fuji Semi-Dwarf Apple along the front of the yard parallel to the road. The third tree is hard to see since it has no leaves but it really is there. The Magnolia is a yellow one and I can't wait to see it's blooms. Although they are messy when they drop the flowers, and they only flower once a year I will throughly enjoy it. I would imagine I will be like on Dennis the Menance when they are waiting for the one plant to open at midnight...
Ron raking in the fertilizer and grass seed. YEAH!
Can you tell I am excited? I love this! I have been searching for just the right fountain for the front flower bed and haven't found it yet. As soon as I do though I will be getting that bed planted and I will again post some new pictures. Stay tuned because one of the flowers in that bed will hopefully be a Camella trained to a trellis! How pretty will that be?! I hope! HEHE!

Just a couple of tips when going to a nursery make sure to check out the clearance plants. At least one of the trees we bought today was in clearance for 50% off. Can you tell which one? Maybe we will be able to tell later when it is dead, but it is worth a shot! Also, the cost normally doubles on fruit trees if they are in the pot. So if you want fruit trees try to get them early on, before they start to pop out any leaves when they are still bare root because they are half the cost! YEAH!

2 comments:

Johnson Family said...

Do the dwarf fruit trees produce fruit too? I just assumed they did but was sitting here last night wondering about things and this is what my brain came up with. Don't ask, my brain just does what it wants.

Shana said...

Yes, they do produce fruit. Supposedly the two that I got cross pollinate each other or something like that. We will see what happens.