The Effortless Garden

My wife and I recently purchased a new home and are enjoying our first spring/summer in the new house. We spent the winter frantically working on house projects, remodeling the kitchen and doing lots of painting. When winter began to wrap up, though, we eagerly turned our attention to landscaping!

We started seedlings for our vegetable garden in an indoor greenhouse. Eventually we tilled the ground and set them in their permanent home outside. We spruced up the front yard with flowering plants, evergreen shrubs and did lots of pruning. It’s been a lot of hard work but the place is really starting to come together!

One of the biggest joys, though, has been all of the unexpected surprises we’ve had in this house (and, no, I’m not talking about all of our roof leaks)! I know what to expect from the plants that I added to the landscape but some of the most exciting moments in our garden have been provided from the plants we inherited when we bought this house – some of which I didn’t even know were hiding out there under the soil!

It’s been amazing to watch daffodils pop up from the bare earth, to see the amazing hostas unfurl their big fan-like leaves and witness the yucca sending up its tall flowering chute!

Sculpting our landscape has proven to be a lot more fun than finishing drywall or wiring can lights – even if we do have years and years of work on the yard to whip it into shape!

What are some surprises that you’ve encountered in your garden?

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