front flower bed

 This is what our front garden area looked like nearly three years ago when we bought the house. It's quite a bit changed now... 

The area in front of and under the deck has been a work in progress. I grew to really dislike the "bush" in front of the stairs because it blocked the view out the front window. It had grown quite a bit from the date of this photo so it was more like a huge round tree up over the roof. And there was tons of weeds under it due to the previous owners love of birds and messy birdseed. But I couldn't get the weeds out due to the high amount of landscaping rock under everything. And those ferns. I had no love for those ferns. Plus half of them were missing after Terry dug out the window well. 

So, two falls ago after the freak snow storm, Atlas when he was cleaning up broken trees and limbs, I convinced Terry to chop the whole bush/tree down. Good riddance. Last summer I pulled up as many weeds and ferns as I could, but was again hindered by the rock.

I finally made up my mind to go to work on this area two weekends ago. When I returned from a run and Terry was busy moving some dirt to the back yard beds, Noah and I got to work moving all that rock. It was a big ridiculous how much was there. It was a lot of work! I needn't have gone on that run...

But after a few hours work, I got the whole area clear and ready for whatever plants I could find. I wanted somethings that would grow up tall and hide the underside of the deck, which has some ugly stains to it. After a wedding last weekend, while the littles were at my folks house, we went to Jolly Lane Greenhouse to get an idea what to plant there. It had to love shade since that area gets very little sun (our tall north facing house blocks the sun). I bought four tall ornamental grasses which I hope will survive and thrive. The packaging said sun/partial shade. We will see how they do...

This last weekend I convinced Terry to dig out that old bush root. He did not want to and only did it because he loves me. He said so. It was a lot of work, but less so than the lilac bush. It only took us about 45 minutes.  

I helped where I could with my weak spaghetti arms. Terry was going crazy with the ax. He needn't have worked out that morning either, probably. He was a good sport and let me take some silly pictures of his accomplishment. Yeah, he's the man.

Like a hunter with his game :D He conquered the stump. 

After that we dug some holes, put some good ol' ranch manured dirt in them along with some coffee grounds, and planted our plants. The coffee grounds are to make the soil more acidic so perhaps these lovely hydrangeas will turn blue.  

The greenhouse hydrangeas were way expensive. So Terry bought me some blue ones from Menards. But they made me nervous because they had been frost burned. One was starting to wilt. When I saw these beautiful pink ones after checking out at Sams, I bought two and returned my Menards ones. I love them! 

So here is the new view of our front flower bed area. It looks so happy and cheerful now. I sincerely hope they all live and grow big. They are actually the very first thing I've planted that wasn't a transplant. I hope I don't have a black thumb because I really like how it looks. We will get one more hydrangea for the left side of the window well. When they grow up big they should be three to five feet wide and four feet tall. The grasses should be between four and six feet tall. We shall see...