Landscaping

As mentioned in a previous post, we have Spring Fever in our house!! We are just dying to get out in the yard and get things planted (Brandon is probably feeling this urge a little more than me, at this moment)!! So, yesterday, we headed down to our local greenhouse to take a look at what they had. They were also having a sale for their Spring Open House, so that was even more incentive to go! We intended to buy some pansies and a new azalea to replace one we lost this winter. As we browsed their shrub selections, found lots of fun things we'd like to plant, but we never found our white azalea :( So, to waste a little more time we went to look at the ornamental trees for our front yard. If you recall, we used to have this in our front flower bed, but it was overtaking our house:

It was very pretty and we hated cutting it down, but it was a MONSTER!!! Since we cut that down, we basically tore everything out of that bed and are slowly replacing things. We've been wanting a small, ornamental tree that is pretty, but doesn't get too big. We love Japanese maples, but they are quite expensive and do not do well on the north side of the house. So, as we were browsing, one of the helpful sales people pointed us to this little beauty:

This is a lollipop tree! It will only get about 5-6 feet tall and about 5-6 feet wide. It is a type of crabapple tree, so it will get really pretty white flowers in the spring and then it will be full of dark green leaves in the summer! Another great thing is that we got this tree for a pretty darn good price, since the greenhouse was having a sale!

We also purchased some pansies, which were on the list! We chose all different shades of purple (are we KSU fans or what?!?!).

Brandon worked hard on planting the tree and laying out the soaker hose to keep our new and not-so-new plants hydrated while I planted the pansies, but I didn't get a picture of him (he claims I never get pictures of him and I suppose he is probably partially right - I always forget). So, he deserves most of the credit for all of this!!

Hopefully in the next few weeks, we'll get our flower pots out and I'll have all sorts of things to fill with plants and flowers! I just love this time of year!!