Gardening Galore

We've been working on making our backyard look more lived in. We added rock all around our house several years ago, but never planted hardly anything. Most of what we did plant was gobbled away by the rabbits. (We have a bit of a rabbit infestation in our neighborhood.)

So we finally planted some more plants. We put azaleas on the side of the deck. (The bare spots to the left will eventually be filled in with a flagstone path since nothing will grow there.)



In the front of the deck we added some lilies to fill in for the grasses the rabbits muched away. They left two of the grasses on the right so we'll see if they hold up.



At the back of the house next to the deck, we added several more hostas and a dwarf lilac bush. We have one giant hosta we planted a few years ago that really needs to be divided and probably moved. This guy has gotten so huge! He's overtaking the hosta next to him. I know we should have done this when they first started to come up, but we put it off and before we knew it we had a monster hosta.





Yikes! He really dwarfs the other hostas.

The peppers, celery, lettuce, spinach, and herbs we started from seed are sprouting up on the deck. If all goes well we will put in a larger garden next year. Rabbit-proofed of course.



And finally I wanted to show off the table and chairs we added to our deck. We've lived here four years and never had a table and chairs outside. My mother-in-law gave us this table. The legs were rusty so I sanded them down and sprayed on a couple coats of Rustoleum. We picked up a couple chairs at Garden Ridge for $25 each and now we are ready to dine in the great outdoors.



So that's what we've done so far to spruce up a little in the backyard. I still need to plant more flowers and bushes (I'm open to suggestions on what to plant.) Next year will require some major deck repair and painting, but for now I'm trying to make the deck a little more cheerful.