Introducing Jenny and Janet!

John, the Petsons, and I are thrilled to introduce two new members to our happy family: Jenny and Janet!

Ha!  I kid!  Can you even imagine?  Our poor tiny sons would be like a four piece McNugget meal for those beasts.  And with less bones.  Eww.

Anyways... last weekend we were out wandering around in our yard and decided it was time to start in on our crazy mossland of a backyard.  Unfortunately, Ahmed Hassan has never approached us during our many trips to Home Depot and the local nurseries to do an episode of "Yard Crashers", so we just have to take it one small project at a time.  And who are those people who always refuse his help?  I guess they're just blessed with perfect landscaping, those jerks.  So, where to start?  John put a few pots we picked up on clearance last fall with our new birdbath out by a group of three trees and we decided it was the perfect place to create a little bed, using the trees as an anchor of sorts.

We headed over to Meadows Farms to check out the plants and find some new additions to our backyard.  Although the trees are leaf-free now, our backyard will soon be covered by an oak canopy, so we're pretty much stuck with shade-loving plants, which rules out most flowers.  Luckily, those plants who do love the shade usually don't require much TLC, which is perfect for us and our black thumbs.  We finally decided on going with some Golden Creeping Jenny, Janet hostas, and a flat of bright pink begonias.  

Our plant bounty.

Then tragedy struck and I got a wicked awful pain in my neck (no, not John, a real pain in the neck) and once we got home, spent the afternoon popping Aleve and cuddling with my heating pad.  John was brave enough to go on without me and started raking up the ground, battling roots and stones, and basically trying to create a spot of land where something besides moss could grow.

After some roughing up.

And after mixing in two bags of Leafgro and a bag of topsoil.

Luckily, by this time, I could finally move my right arm and head (and missed out on the hardest part), so I headed out back to help with the planting.  Before planting, we laid all the plants out in their containers to determine the best spacing and arrangement.

Then we went to work burying everybody.  It was so much easier to do in the topsoil than in our front yard beds, planting directly into the horrible clay.  In no time, all the Jennies and Janets were in the ground.

Oh, and we planted half of the begonias in three of our containers for a cute splash of color and a bit more structure to balance out the bird bath.

Looking at our finished product, we decided it didn't quite look finished and needed some sort of edging.  We still have bricks leftover from the front yard edging project, but I thought those were much too bulky for this little bed.  So, we thought of our natural collection of a jillion rocks and maybe we could finally put those to use... and they're free!  Well, we paid a whole ton to have a yard that came with all those wretched rocks, so I guess not free, but included in the price of our mortgage?  John and I wandered about the yard digging up little rocks and cleaning them off until we had enough to surround the bed.

For about $100 and an afternoon of work, we have another little bed to enjoy and a promising start to our backyard landscaping!  Here's a few more photos just because.  :)

Chewie checking out the salad bar, er... begonias.

Don't they kinda look like they have little mouths?

A closer look at the plants and stone edge.