We have had this plan for the front yard planting bed for quite a few months. However, with Michigan weather, you have to wait until sometime in May before the risk of overnight freezing goes away. Our plan was to do this as soon as we returned from our vacation out west, but we unfortunately fell sick and that derailed us just a bit as we rested and recovered.

Thankfully, Mom was bored in the house and in the house bored on Sunday, so she called us looking for something to do while Dad watched his races at home. We invited her over and the three of us headed to Telly’s Greenhouse – a local plant shop that we like.

We had a hard time sticking to just plants for the planting bed, as there were so many pretty and interesting plants, but I think we did a good job with our selections! We wanted to have plants of varying heights, and ended up with some grasses and dahlias for the back, cosmos for the middle layer, and some feathery plants and the little colorful ones (I’d have to look at the tags to see what they were) for the short layer up front.

Donald and my mom go to work weeding out the planting bed and getting the dirt ready. There were some existing plants: a couple hostas and my azalea bush. There were a few baby mums, but we transferred these to some pots and will re-home them to the back yard. They had me come out periodically to help determine plant placement. When they didn’t need me, I was inside playing Animal Crossing. My island had been neglected.

We love our plants! I’m so glad that Donald loves keeping our yard looking great! It was a lot of fun to pick these out together. Disclaimer: Yes, I know the house needs painting. We are going to try and get that done this summer.

These are a few photos of the final result! The flowers will continue to grow and get established, and I’ll try to remember to post some updates later on. Of course, as it happens, it decided to rain pretty hard just an hour or so after we finished planting. We checked on the plants in the morning, and – for the most part – they looked to have survived the deluge pretty well. Just the cosmos flowers were bent over.

Donald quickly stood them back up and packed some dirt around them before we headed over to Mom and Dad’s for a Memorial Day lunch. After getting back home, he used some of the posts we had from our foray into tomato growing to bolster the cosmos a bit until they could get a little stronger.

We think it looks a lot better and the pops of color and cute flowers make us smile whenever we see them!

Love, Jenn and Donald