All things green

All things green...

I am working to live a more "green life"...but this is not the green I am referring to.

The green that grows in my yard.

Bushes, shrubs and plants.

I am in love.

Where I got this love from is beyond me and my parents.

I honestly could spend hours outside inspecting each new growth

We decided to try many different things since we have never done this "yard/gardening" thing before on our own yard. All of the things we have tried...everything has grown...and some even doubled in size at a minimum. We ordered knockout roses and hydrangea trees from http://www.burgess.com/.

We purchased Tea Olive Trees, Butterfly Bushes, Maple Trees, Azaleas, Pussy Willow Trees, a Cherry Blossom Tree and a Magnolia that is blooming gorgeous white blooms ALL from the local nursery, Southern Styles!

Although they are all now "growing"...I wouldn't recommend mail order anything...go to your local nursery. The mail order hydrangea tree came to us much what it looks like now... minus the green flowering leaves. Imagine getting that in the mail!?!? We were told not to plant it into the ground after we had already planted both of them in the ground. We ripped one out and put it into a pot. We now have a competition between the two to see which grows better and faster and so far the one in the ground is winning. Please admire our beauty to the left :)

The knockout roses purchased mail order were planted around our utility boxes which we can't stand and are actually on our neighbors property...but we love them so we went ahead and planted anyway with their permission. These started off as ONE GREEN LEAF....now check out all the growth. Eventually these will grow into very large bushes with gorgeous red rose blooms. We will look forward to those next season, for now we are just glad they are growing and are alive.

My arch nemesis: SLUGS....I started to notice my hostas, hydrangea's and tea olive leaves were all getting dark in color and were getting eaten alive by something that liked to make holes in the leaves and/or each them from the outside in. I did a little research and found out we might have a slug problem.

How to cure slug problems: Shallow dish filled with beer. Get slugs drunk and they can't get back out of the dish. We have 8 dishes hidden in the landscaping by the stems of the bushes that the slugs were chowing down on. When we awoke the next mornng each dish was filled with slugs. Anywhere from 1 slug to - 15 slugs. GROSS! Let's hope this natural method does the trick and ours bushes keep growing and flowering minus the bite marks.

Lastly our front bed. The mums I planted last fall are now re blooming, the bushes are full and very green (thanks to the Holly and the flowers are all blooming. Note to self: next year flowers will be all one color. I decided after the fact that I am not a fan of the mixed batch.

GROW GRASS GROW....We have tried everything we know at this point and are waiting for our grass to grow. We finally mowed for the first time in 9 months and honestly we probably only needed to edge.

We are definitely enjoying our yard!

Oh let me not forget... our new patio umbrella will make its debut this week. The recent wind snapped our wooden umbrella and we had to trash it.

Oh how much we love our nice big yard....if only it wasnt so humid and hot this weekend I would've sat out there all weekend.