Looking like Christmas

I just realized that it has been quite some time since I've updated my blog. I have continued to work in the yard on the weekends (its too dark by the time I get home from work), mostly at this point trying to continue to clean up all the debris that was in the yard when I bought the house and work on adding some mulch.

I have made some strides cleaning out what was essentially a jungle behind the shack in the back. When I first started, you could barely walk back there and now I can pretty easily go most of the way around the shack. There are a bunch of tree saplings and privets back there and I am taking a wait and see approach to decide which ones stay and which ones go. I did get some more garbage hauled out of there, as well as a decent number of larger tree limbs. And, I even found some more bricks buried in the ground, which I dug out and used as part of the edging on my foundation planting.

I have continued to add mulch to the holly part of the foundation planting. I added another 2 bags as I found some weeds trying to grow up through the mulch. I need at least one more back to spread along the back.

I also decided that all my shrubs needed to be mulched. Currently I am using a light colored cyprus mulch in the front ($2/bag at Home Depot) but for the shrubs I decided to use the $2.29/bag mini pine bark nuggets. I spread 6 bags of the pine bark on my shrubs on Sunday and I still need probably 4 more to mulch in the rest of my camellias, as I want to basically make a camellia and hydrangea bed back there and mulch in the whole area. I also checked all my plants and I guess they are all doing well. All the evergreens are still green. I continue to have bulb foilage coming up in my pots and my pansies are blooming. I wonder if I need to feed them.

We got an email at work on Tuesday that one of the departments was giving away their old fake Christmas tree. So, we got ourselves a free fake tree. It is quite nice and I've now got it lit and got a few glass balls on it.

My mom put up the icicle lights on the front of the house a week or so ago and we both think they look nice. I'd like to find two wreaths for our two front windows, but so far I haven't been able to find exactly what I'm looking for, at least not at a decent price. I'm hoping to pick up something good at the After Christmas sales.