The Yard coming into bloom

A couple weekends ago, Steve and I decided to fill in a few spots in our front yard that seemed sparse.  We felt that all of our plants have had enough time to grow in and that we have  good feel of what the yard looks like year round.  I think that we have the open areas because we did not lay out our plants right and follow our landscape plan quite right. 

we added a couple new grasses here

a new fern and some champagne colored Heucharas

a new lewisia to replace the one that died

a few new black mondo grasses, some varigated grasses and 2 champagne heucheras

Safety First!  You must wear your helmet while showing off your bee-boo (belly button) and helping plant

started the garden-mint, basil, chives

lettuce, cilantro, green onions (left from last year)

And here is the house just a week and a half later-everything has taken off!

This past weekend, we were lucky enough to enjoy a weekend on the Oregon coast-while the weather was less than awesome Friday morning, it was amazing the rest of the weekend.  We even saw a whole bunch of Seals and their pups swimming in the water as well as sunning on the sand-so cool.

Ruler Ben

Seals!

making some of the most sinful Ice Cream ever-Ben&Jerry's Coffee Heath Bar Crunch!

the clan-can you tell that Ben is two from this picture?

Is the Grass Always greener on the other side?

some siding appears but still so much to do

So Steve and I spent part of our weekend shopping for rocks-never realized just how many different shapes of rocks there are at a small little rock quarry just outside of Portland. Anyways, we settled on Columbia River Boulders from Heritage Rock. After purchasing 3/4 of a ton of rock (super cheap), we hauled it home in the trusty rig and then I dashed off to a girlfriend's birthday while Steve took it upon himself to unload the mother rocks on his own and try to "roll" them to their resting spots...after unloading the lighter weight ones (several hundred pounds each), Steve went for the 500-600 lb. mother and finally had a neighbor come offer to help (or more like the neighbor's wife offered her husband's help) when he almost had it in place and they got it in. Anyways, we spent part of Saturday placing and planting the rocks=burying the rocks....they look awesome and really light up the yard. 7 were from the rock yard and another 4 we dug up in our yard.

our mother rock
(wooly thyme in foreground which we want to grow so it looks like sod)

Sunday brought the start of lap board siding (we had hung the Tyvek the previous week) which is not a treat to say the least being that the siding is not ridiculously difficult to put up but the corner 1x1" pieces threw us for a ride...we got a small front section done before Steve about crashed. We spent the remainder of the day shopping for grasses...we chose Hamelin fountain grass because the grass that Ryan chose is not sold in Oregon. It really resembles the deer grass Ryan initially chose. When we got home I took a little rest while Steve dug 19 holes for various plants and our house is really starting to look more complete. We can't wait to have the siding done so that we can get the plants in close to the house!

a sorry attempt at a full landscape shot....
but can you tell how the rock blends nicely with the quartzite path?