I love gardening and landscaping and creating beauty in my surroundings. I love getting my hands in the dirt and feeling the soil, smelling it on my skin. I hate that it dries my hands out ridiculously and never seems to get out from under my fingernails, but everytime I put on my gardening gloves and begin to work, off they go 5 minutes later as I itch to FEEL the process. It's much like baking with me. If I'm making bread or mixing dough, I have to get my hands in there and FEEL it. This spring, much to Kyle's chagrin, I have been ambitious in my plans. I spent the winter planning exactly what I wanted to do and where. Knowing it would be a plan stretched out over several years, I focused on the most visible aspect of our house - the front! And I'm still not entirely finished, but the progress that's been made is so satisfying to me.

Last fall, I finished a small bed to the left of our walkway and did a tiny little comma of a bed on the other side of the walkway, but it just wasn't enough. So, over the past few weeks, I have pulled out the big guns, consulted my brother Chad, and really given it some sweat and blood of my own. I recruited Kyle to help me one Saturday (he hates working in the yard on landscaping stuff), and while he ripped out the numerous wisteria vines snaking under the St. Augustine grass, I cut and moved the St. Augustine as sod squares. Talk about incredibly exhausting. Even when you're NOT 6 months pregnant. I bought and planted over 16 shrubs, lorapetalum and limemound spirea, a Japanese maple and some sweet potato vines which will take over this summer. I have been working also on container plants for our back deck, making it a cozy, fragrant place to sit and have a cup of tea or an early morning Bible study.

Here's what it was...





And here is what it has become...