this ole house: landscaping

the term "landscaping" is taken rather loosely around here. last year, it entailed motivating to cut the yard every now and then. maybe do a little watering (a futile effort during a high desert summer-- the idea of green grass here is pretty silly. but that's another post altogether). but this year we tried to put some time and energy into the yard, being that eventually we will sell this place and buyers like green yards, whether we care much about them or not.

as many of you know, one of the ginormous spruce trees in front had to be cut down last fall *sniff sniff* but removing all that shade meant that alot of native plants came back in the front beds! bonus! we like native plants so it was good motivation to do even more. so we weeded and replanted the side beds and they came bouncing back as well. double bonus. we've got one more front bed to go before we call it good, but for now we are pretty pleased. now i realize that this photos might not look that spectacular to many of you, but if you had seen this yard in previous years (ahem, no thanks to the last owner) you would be atleast slightly impressed!

but the question still remained-- what to do with all that space under the spruce tree? nothing will grow there and it looks pretty blah. so we are in the process of graveling underneath it (a technique that works well here), doing a little rock garden if you will, as well as planting a burm of aspens to replace the space from the one we cut down.

**and we should add that isa is a big help too these days. the word "help" being another loose term around here!**