My vacation is wrapping up. It went by fast, but I’m thrilled with how productive I was. In fact, I probably worked harder than I do when not on vacation. You saw my little driveway island out front, but now it’s time to show you the rest of the front.

You will recall, in an effort to save some time/labour, I covered the area I wanted to turn into garden with black plastic a few weeks back. This is how it looked just before I took it off.

As you can see, there were a few downsides to my little plan. The problem was, I didn’t have enough stakes to really hold the plastic down. I was only able to hold the corners down. Which meant to wind blew gaps open. and in those gaps, the weeds had a hay day! And I couldn’t weed whack them without wrecking the plastic.

So this is how things looked when I got all that plastic off.

Not bad, but not quite the free and clear space I thought it would be! So I got down on my knees and got to work!

It apparently also made the perfect home for toads. It took almost all day to get the space clear enough to plant, and in that time, I relocated SEVEN different toads

But all the effort was worth it. After weed removal, toad relocation, soil ammending, plant adding and mulching, I had a shiny new front garden!

Obviously, it’s got a lot of filling in to do, but I’m absolutely thrilled with it. And there’s so much in there… a rose (called Chrysler Imperial, which I bought for my Car Guy), bleeding hearts (pink and white, day lilies, a burning bush, irises, helenium, a peony, and so much more. Quite a bit of was bare root specimens, so it will take a little longer for them to make an appearance.

To dress things up a bit, I popped in some annuals (snap dragons and dianthans.

Ans before I go… here’s a little before and after, with the first pic from the listing when we bought the house.

It’s finally starting to look like MINE!