Ring Around the...Evergreen Tree

Our front yard has been bugging me ever since we moved in last October. Unfortunately the inside of our house was in need of so many fix-up projects that we largely had to just ignore the outside of the house until now, when we are (mostly) completed with the indoor projects and Spring and (relatively) sunny weather has returned to Newfoundland.

We did however paint the front door back in October, which you can read about here. It used to be this sad light blue shade of rusty-licious, and we brightened it up with a bold shade called "Daring Indigo." That, unfortunately, is where we stopped as far as the exterior goes, until now.

After some thorough instructions from my mom (aka gardener extraordinaire), we built up a raised bed around the base of our tree with some old (aka free) cinder blocks we found under our deck. Then we filled them in with dirt and planted some Hosta bulbs. The kids loved helping in the "garden."

The Hosta's I planted around the tree (the Frances Williams in the large picture, and the Siebaldiana Elegans in the top right corner):

The cinder block ring:

Lincoln and I staking out where each bulb will go:

Filling in with Dirt:

Watering our bulbs:

We took a little break at this point because we ran out of dirt, and Lincoln wanted to watch the big back loader right beside our house at work.

Later when daddy got home from work and brought us more dirt we finished filling in, and then topped it off with some mulch.

Scarlett had a grand time digging around with her little cultivator.

There are six Hostas planted, you can see the tops just barely sticking up through the dirt.

Our next outdoor project is to do another raised bed just behind and to the right of this one, underneath the bay window and the surrounding area which is also quite awful right now. But for today I'm quite pleased with our little plants. I can't wait for them to really start showing.