Enjoying Spring!

We are really enjoying the beautiful spring weather. McKenzie is playing lots of basketball and David and Matt are loving playing baseball in the backyard. I am getting the outside all spruced up for spring. I am loving making this house our home!

For spring and summer, I hung a small, grapevine basket wreath on my back door and put a pot of real ivy in it, along with a bow.

I found this new doormat at The Gift Box here in town. Since we always use the back door, I like to make it welcoming with seasonal things.

On the front door I hung my basket wreath that I always use, just took the fall stuff out and had The Flower Co. freshen my old spring stuff up and make me a new bow. I also hung my initial canvas that was at my other house by the front door. Kimberly Queen ferns are in the urns beside the front door. I plan on doing a few container gardens, just when I find some time.

Here is a picture of the established bed beside the driveway. The azaleas have been beautiful. I have enjoyed seeing this bed come to life. This bed needs alot of cleaning out, though. The groundcovers have gotten a little out of control.

We still have not finished the front beds yet. After having everything dug up and beds prepared with soil conditioner, we discovered  a drainage problem that needed to be fixed before planting the shrubs. It feels like it is taking forever for this project to be finished. After talking with Marty and showing her our problem on Monday, I got a call from her the next day saying that my brother-in-law, Kenny, wanted to hang gutters for me and lay a drainage pipe in the flower bed to take the water out of the bed. I was thrilled. He did a great job and we really appreciated his help. Now hopefully with a few bags of topsoil from Wal-Mart, I will get this behind me. We decided on the brown gutters and also to leave them brown and not paint them to match the rest of the trim. I really like the way they turned out. They are not an eye sore like I thought they would be. Kenny said the other gutter was barely hanging on so no wonder the bed was being overloaded with water! We extended the length, so hopefully it will do the job of keeping excess water out. After talking to several people in the neighborhood who have been here forever, they all say our neighborhood is very low and the soil is not good. Maybe the things we have done will help matters! Either that or help me develop more patience! Our sod is getting greener every day, so I am happy with the way things are turning out. Here are a few pictures...