Finished landscaping...for now.

During
(...I never can seem to get a true "before" picture)

We worked hard to re-do our landscaping around the front of the house recently. It took us a while. I did most of the stuff in front of the house myself. Not because Steve wouldn't help. He certainly would have and did, some. But because I liked the work and the freedom to work at my own pace. The girls helped a bunch too. Well...Hannah did. The other two tried a bit but spent a lot more time playing in the dirt. :-)

Not that Steve didn't work hard. Just that I did the parts by the house. We had a lot of rock-work we wanted to do....cheaply! So we made a few trips to an area in the mountain/boonies where we could haul a bunch out of the creek there for free! It was a lot of fun and we would be sore going to bed at night but it was worth it. (I mentioned Julian the craw fish a while back; that is where we got him. We had company for dinner one night and were going to show them Julian who lived in a plastic shoe box on the kitchen counter. Thing is, he wasn't home. This was unusual for Julian who never left home, on account of the fact that he couldn't, up until someone- me- had the absence of forethought to put a little rooting plant in the corner of the box. Turns out, craw fish are pretty good climbers...)

Anyway, now that you know all that extra stuff, Here are some pictures of the girls working with me on the yard:

Hannah was a big help. She was actually able to fill the wheelbarrow alone several times. She was a very eager worker. She's growing so fast!

In this picture they are all working.
This is misleading as the next two pictures will illustrate...

Ivy likes to supervise.

Annette took many breaks.
She used this time to remind us how hard she had been working.

The finished product on the left-hand side. This whole bed wasn't there before.

The walkway. This was just a smooth slope but we decided that we would like to terrace it with stacked stone walls. I am very happy with the finished product! I wish I had closed the garage door for this photo...

We need to plant some flowers. Actually, I do have some that I put in there. A couple of hydrangeas over here and a couple of peonies on the other side, but they aren't much to look at yet.

Tomorrow I'll show you some other planting we did this week!