A Little Landscaping

For the past year, we've had an empty space in the rock bed on the front of the house, just below the office window. Two of the bushes in that bed died, finally, although they were probably on their last legs when we bought the house. I dug out the bushes last year and then was too busy/indecisive to replace them. For a few months, I was looking for a spirea of the right size and able to take some shade. Then I was concerned that this is really a hot spot since although this is a shady spot, it is the West side of the house and receives a few hours of direct afternoon sunlight. Finally, I decided to wait for inspiration to strike.

Three events coincided this weekend which enabled us to finally fill in the empty space on the West side of our house: 1.) a relatively quiet weekend, 2.) a drop in the relative humidity, and 3.) a 40% off plant sale at our local hardware store. The two shrubs on the sides are leptodermis, a flowering shrub that matures to about 2'x2'. The middle shrub is a hummingbird sweetspire, which should mature to about 3'x4'. I hope we've made good choices.

I also hope that the leptodermis doesn't live up to it's name ("thin-skinned" if I'm interpreting the Greek roots correctly). This spot has the worst soil for digging in our yard. It's all hard-packed clay, and there's rocks from previous application, plus the usual tree roots. A shovel gets you absolutely no where, and we dug these by hand spade instead. There's no way we ever want to dig holes here ever again.

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O. Photos

O. is posing for the camera these days. Here he's doing his best (and unintentional) Home Alone impression.

What's with the blue and yellow shoestrings on his feet, you ask?

These are laces from a lacing set. He wraps them around his feet and calls him his "beautiful princess shoes."

Those laces come in handy for other accouterments. I call this photo "I love belts, Momma!" (actual quote from this morning).
Yeah, I don't know what he's doing with his leg in that pose either, but he was insistent that that was how he wanted the photo to look.

One more photo, and this one is future blackmail: O. in his "beautiful princess dress." The dress is the table runner that Mom quilted for us. He likes to spin and twirl around in it.