Landscaping Day

the day had finally come for us to do some type of landscaping to our yard. when we moved in, there were only 3 bushes, and they were ugly, so we pulled them out. since then, we've mostly had dead grass and weeds to bring out the beauty of our yard. today marc's parents came up to help. nonno and i did the shopping, and i had found a great nursery in town where i got most of the bushes. we ended up putting in 9 bushes - 6 to hide the slab and pipes on the front of the house, and 3 to try to hide the big green poles/boxes that i guess are for electricity?? marc dug up the grass for the flower bed and we were fortunate enough to have white rock left from the house that we used to edge the bed. we hoped to add a big magnolia tree, but the one i wanted was already sold to someone. we ran into a few issues along the way. we live right across the road from an area called "white rock estates" and it's called that for a reason. as soon as you start digging holes, you hit plenty of white rock. we're not even sure if we could have dug a 2 foot hole for the giant tree i wanted, so glad i didn't spend $219 on it if it can't even be planted! the other issue came in planting bushes by the front of the house. nonno was digging and very quickly water came spraying out everywhere- so because of the rock, the water line is not very deep!!! luckily he had experience with this and was able to fix it. so here's our improved front yard. things will grow and cover up slabs, boxes, etc soon, and we have to add some new sod since ours died before we bought it, but it's an improvement!
PS (added Sunday morning) Last night after midnight Marc woke me up. We were running the sprinklers through all 9 or 10 stations, which takes a while. Well, it came time for the area in front of the windows to water, and guess what?? another broken pipe! water was spraying everywhere. luckily this time it is the sprinkler pipe, not the main water line, so we just shut it off and tried to go back to sleep. now we are on our own fixing it today. 

before shot... nothing but dead grass

getting some help

after... no regular bushes here - 2 rose bushes, 2 blue plumbago, and 2 of something else i can't remember right now, but one has pink flowers and one yellow. plus, a lantana in the middle. i love that the white rock is the same as what the house is made of!

these are red tipped bushes... they will eventually hide the slab more. there are also 3 little ones to the left of the tree. on the far right is where we busted the water line!

you can still see all the pretty utility cases, but when the bushes grow it should help hide them! the house to the right is for sale, and currently has 2 foot weeds everywhere, so just know those aren't OUR weeds!