Glorious Gardening

Well, more like an "extreeeeme patio makeover". I wish so badly that I had a decent 'before' pic, just so you can really see how bad it was. It was disgusting. Embarrasing. Sad. I enlisted the help of my green-thumb mama & my sister KayLee.

Earlier this afternoon we spent hoursss digging, pulling, rakeing, clipping, trimming, KILLING (spiders that is), sweeping and planting. It was intense - and sooooooooooo incredibly worth it. I HAD to get it done before my lil bday surprise for James tomorrow. I'm so proud of what we did & beyond thankful for my mom & sister for their help & determination to get this patio looking good. My mom knew it'd be work, but I don't think she realized just HOW much work there was to be done.

Here's me - after completing my first trip to Home Depot for soil & some purty flowies. I was excited...haha. I only bought a few flowers to add some color...but the rest of the gardening was plants that I shopped for over at my mama's casa...including lots of succulents, some horsetail...and some other things that I forgot the names of, haha, whoops.

Here's the only 'eh' before pic I have...I wish you could see more of it, especially the long part on the left, along the garage wall - because this doesn't even do justice:

And finally here's the 'after' shots...AHHHHHmazing.

The left side has this huge tree, that was crazzzy overgrown before we cut it back, and where the stones are, was previously covered in thick dead leaves and majorly overgrown fern...which we decided to pull out most of...except for one on the very far left side at the end, haha.

Your welcome hubby!! Now the only work he has to do this next weekend is trim back the other side of the bougainvillea plant that's starting to encroach on the sidewalk...sorry neighbors!! haha...I have a love/hate relationship with this plant. It looks okay when the lil papery lookin flowers bloom, but in the summer this thing literally grows like a WEED (which I was not so fortunate to actually encounter a few weeks ago when weeds randomly started growing evvverywhere). Anyway, you seriously have to cut back these branches at least once a week...which are covered in one to two inch long thorns!!! ugh.