The one where we plant a tree

I got the sweetest gift from Mark - he promised to buy and plant a tree in our backyard! That was on our anniversary...6 months ago. SO the time finally came that I dragged him out of the house and down the street to Home Depot to "get me my tree, dangit!"

Yep, I forced him to pose at Home Depot. I then made him turn in his man card.

I'm not sure why he was so worried about how we would get it home...

I swear, I'm going to have like 2 total pictures of my kids...but I'll have a million of that time we planted a tree!

After a small amount of research, we decided to go with an "autumn blaze" maple tree. I crack up every time I say the name, but it's supposed to have 'exceptional' fall color which was basically my #1 requirement for my tree.

Breaking ground!

I touched the top of the tree and said "goodbye! grow tall and strong!" 

I'm so weird.

I was very helpful.

Motley LOVES her new tree! It's like a sister to her.

SO I REALLY wanted to get a picture in front of our tree and continue documenting it on our anniversary to see how it grows. Easier said than done, my friends. Check out our little photobomber...

She is insane. Anyway, here we are on day 1 of our tree journey! I'm so excited to watch it grow!

Phase 1 yard overhaul

Mark and I have been discussing our plans for our landscaping recently. It's definitely been at the front of our minds, because after I put in about 2 hours of yard work on Sunday after lunch (details later), Mark was ready at 5:30 to head to Home Depot and start what I'll call "phase 1" of the process. 

This is what we've been living with:

We have a LOT in store like ripping out concrete, changing the flower bed shapes, laying in a path, putting down a patio, and building a pergola. But for Sunday night, here's what we accomplished:

We started by clearing out the ground cover that was in the bed to the right of our back doors.

We picked up four common boxwoods at Home Depot as well as 8 bags of cypress mulch and 18 7x7" stone pavers.

This side of the yard is the bane of our existence. TOTAL overhaul coming soon!

First, I planted the boxwoods while Mark leveled the area under the kitchen window.

We want a dedicated place for the grill out of the way and off of the 1960's sidewalk, so we laid down pavers with about 1" of space in between.

I took a break for photos, clearly. ;)

...and Mark posed for a Home Depot plug. (not sponsored, but wish we were!)

After everything was planted and set, I filled in the pavers with as much fine dirt as I could. We were winging this, so we might come back with sand to really set the stones, but so far this has worked. Then, Mark laid down the mulch.

Details, people!

And there she is!

Y'all, this is SUCH an improvement to what we had. 

SIDE NOTE: Yes, the beds look really bare right now, but only because we went quickly to Home Depot to grab the boxwoods. They didn't have the rest of the planting I wanted, so we will go to a nursery soon to get the rest of the items. In the meantime, we have a dog that likes to get muddy and dig in mud, so we wanted to make sure we mulched the freshly dug up beds to deter that. Soon this will be lush with flowers and grasses. :)

I really can't believe we got all of this done AND went to the store in 2 hours. I can't wait to see what our yard looks like in a couple months! Get ready, it's landscaping season!

...I'm SO sore...