My New Front Flower Bed

It has taken weeks and weeks of slow moving progress, but I can finally show you what I've been working on!  We had a small raised bed in the front under the kitchen window.  (I, of course, did not take a before picture.  That would take way too much planning on my part!)  But here is what it looked like after I had started working on it.  You can see the pile of dirt up by the house.  That is the original flower bed minus the pavers.

Our neighbors gave us some mulch a while back and we used it for other places around the yard.  What mulch was left we piled in this bed and that ended up tilled in with the rest of the dirt.  (My friend Dawn pointed out that the mound was right under the cross.)

I had a LOT of pavers to move and grass to remove.  I thought it would ease up after I got that part done, but no such luck.  The original pile of dirt was full of rocks and I didn't think it was going to be good soil for the new plants.  Unfortunately, that dirt was so compacted it was a bear to break apart.  As I chipped away at it, we took several loads and dumped in the back yard for a future project.  

My sweet hubby helped me on Saturday getting the last of the old stuff out and then tilling up the bed.  I had bought a couple of bags of gardening soil and he tilled all that together.  Hopefully, that will help the plants have a good chance of surviving.  They need all the help they can get with me taking care of them!

Throughout the whole process we dug up all kinds of things.  Kentucky is known for rocky soil, but big chunks of concrete was not what we expected.

This is what we had to dig up to plant the very first plant.  We were really wondering if it was a sign of things to come!

The rock path is made out of rocks we dug up when removing the grass.  Believe it or not, there are even more!

We ended up with a couple extra bushes and decided to plant them in key places to hide the crawl space entrance

and the a/c unit (if you look real close you can see the little bushling).  I need to make another run to Lowe's to get one more bag of mulch to finish off these areas.

We purchased smaller versions of the plants to keep the cost down, so it looks a little barren at the moment. 

I can't wait to see it once they grow a bit!

Living thru faith,

Misty