Front Yard Pictures!

Finally - I had my parents (very nice!) camera and was in the mood to take some pictures of our work on the front yard...or should I say our ongoing work to keep it alive. We are on watering restrictions, so I (8 1/2 months pregnant) have to water everything by hand except on Wednesday morning and evening (involves getting up at 5:00am to turn on the sprinkler).

This is the front of our house...

This is the front porch where we sit and enjoy the flowers, doves, and hummingbirds.

This swing on the front porch is just big enough for my daughter and I to swing on and eat our yogurt and honey after her nap every day...

One of my birdbaths - right outside my bedroom window...a passion vine is climbing up the trellis behind it. I dug little mini-trenches around each flowerbed - I thought is gave it a more defined look. I plan to line the "trench" with river rock or crushed granite.

This is one of two flower beds I made on either side of the sidewalk going up to the house. I have knockout roses (best roses that will bloom and bloom in full to part sun) and lantana in these. To create a flowerbed where grass once was:

1. Outline the shape you want with a water hose

2. Use a shovel to dig around the inside of the hose.

3. Take up all the grass - you can either do this with a shovel/hoe or like I did, get on my hands and knees and grab the grass with my hands and shake out the dirt - I also have a little hand held garden rake type thing that digs up the grass pretty well.

4. Either bring in more dirt to make a raised bed or go ahead and line bed with either thick newspaper or black weed out plastic.

5. Plant your flowers by making holes through the plastic and then put mulch on top.

6. I usually line my flower beds with rocks.

This is one of my favorite spots! It was originally a huge flowerbed on the side of our driveway, that was so overwhelming. I carved out a little "room", lined with rocks, keep the original flowerbed around the parimeter, painted an old bench I got from my sister-in-law and bought a $35 birdbath in New Braunfels. I was able to save most of the plants (one rose bush didn't make it)...but lantana and plumbago transplants well!