Last weekend - Yard work!

This weekend, I decided, heck, I have nothing else to do, so why not try my hand at back breaking labor for 13 hours??? (Don’t know what I was thinking…obviously.)

Before - Day 1

We have a hideous flower bed next to our pool in the backyard, complete with ugly dirt, an ugly palmetto, and an ugly fishtail palm. (A palm is not a tree, incidentally. It is not correct to say palm tree. People in FL will sic their dogs on you.) U-G-L-Y! So I wanted to get rid of the ugly and put in more lovely. I first had to dig through the dirt to keep all the rocks that were in the bed currently. This was a ton of rocks, but saved money so I only had to buy 4 bags of rocks to complete the project. I bet I spent about 10 hours total digging out rocks and putting them in piles/buckets. Definitely the most painful part of the process.

After I got the rocks out, I had to pull the plants we removed. In that process, I broke a fiberglass shovel, which meant I had to get a stronger shovel. I didn't know I had that in me, really. Seriously.

Rock pile - end of Saturday (9 hours)

Then I needed to lower the dirt level in the bed to keep the dirt from creeping out onto the pool deck, as you can see was happening from the first photo. I believe I bagged about 15 thirty pound bags of dirt, keeping a few bags to fill in holes in our yard, but mainly putting out in front for the yard collectors. That was also a lot of labor. Don't have a picture of this though, sorry you'll have to use your imagination.

We now have 3 crotons, left an existing hibiscus, and a Cavendish Banana Tree, which is a small banana tree that produces edible bananas. Yippie! We also have 7 other smaller plants that have rubbery type leaves that should stand up to the harsh sun and drought, but also the significant downpours we get as well. I think it was well worth it.

Croton

Smaller plant

Finished product

Total cost:

$30 Banana Tree

$13*3 Crotons

$5*7 Smaller plants

$4*4 Rocks

$13 New shovel

$11 Small hoe to get rocks

=$141 plus tax ! Not bad at all.

On a side note, I'm thinking about switching our house colors from boring/blah to something more interesting. Perhaps a sage green for the stucco and some dark grey shutters with iron accents. Anyone have any opinions???