in preparation of a fence.

the fence separating our home and our new neighbors is chainlink. this is leftover from the previous homeowners, and used to feature barbed wire at the top. luckily, that part was taken down several months ago.

we got an estimate done to replace the chainlink with a redwood fence, and are moving forward with it. the fence posts will be set right into the concrete. however, there are three bougainvillea plants right where the fence would be going, so we we needed to dig them up.

limited space for digging due to the concrete.

the smallest and easiest to handle of the three bougainvilleas.

we are happy to move these guys too, because they haven't been thriving in their little concrete box. it wasn't all that easy to get them up either. the biggest of the three (not pictured) and roots that went down pretty far, and trying to dig them up without damaging the roots was really hard. we probably weren't successful either, but we've got them in pots and our fingers crossed they'll survive.

the bougainvillea repotted. as you can see, there is little privacy with a chainlink fence.

all clear! hopefully we'll get the contractor scheduled soon and the chain link will be gone and replaced with a pretty redwood fence. we've got big(ish) plans for this space! more of that to come in time..

view from the street of this unutilized space between the two houses.

a cheap DIY place for plants.

sanford says this part of the yard is UGLY, mom and dad!

we have to agree, so we decided to do something about it!

we don't really have a back yard so much as a big, covered concrete area that is used for storage of things. and recently, because of all the plants we bough, a lot of the plants ended up sitting back there until we could find a place to plant them. we spend a little over $10 at home depot on a bunch of cinder blocks, and combined them with a couple pieces of lumber that were left by the last ownders of the house (plus some ol' fashioned sweeping) and voila!

it's still got a long way to go - we have plans to update this space to make it more open and airy and green - but in the meantime, we have an organized place to incubate plants until we plant them!

it's especially great for plants that like morning sun (which it gets lot of, below) but like shade otherwise.

landscape edging, seven months later.

we've been buying plants left and right recently. one of the plants we bought was a large fern to fill this bit of dead space on the lawn, and this pretty pink plant you can see just to it's right. but as you can tell, it's not very well defined, and we even had the issue of the gardener weed-eating our poor plants a bit. so we decided to build a bit more separation into the area to highlight our pretty plants.

technically, it was a project we started back in december and never finished. it's a good thing too, because we probably would have just edged a straight line the entire way and not done what we decided to, which is to add a nice curve to add a home for the new plants. so we dug a 4 inch deep trench, put down the edging, and filled things back in.

the other thing we decided to do this time was put down a weed barrier underneath the mulch. there's lots of weedy grasses that just keep coming up, and we simply don't have the time to keep up with them.

look how much the colors really pop with the dark red mulch we bought!

day of, we didn't have enough mulch to cover everything, but we've since remedied that - we promise! and the best part! the gardeners didn't destroy our plants any more this past week! success! you can see below that we also have a baby foxtail and another grassy plant to be planted behind it. we really love our plants..!