Life in the neighborhood.

Busy but beautiful day today. Todd worked in the garage and shed, continuing to put things away and get organized...I made potato salad for dinner tomorrow, did laundry, and got hanging baskets for the front porch and some flowers for the planters on our deck. It was warm and sunny...all the neighbors were out cutting grass and working on projects...the neighborhood kids roamed and played...and a breeze blew through the open windows. Heavenly!

Here are some pics of what we've done to the front of our house so far. Here's the house as it was when we bought it in December:

Here it is after we added the boxwood "shrubberies" in March:

And here's the stone border Todd built last week:

I love this border. Love it, love it! Once we get some more soil for the bed, I'm going to load it with flowers. Not sure what yet, though. I can totally see white alyssum fluffing over the wall at the front, but I have no idea what to put behind it. Petunias seem so...obvious. But they are cheap and would probably do okay in that full sun exposure.

Meanwhile, the back yard is really getting "leafed-in." The trees in the ravine behind us are filling out so much that it's getting harder to see the houses on the other side of the creek. Todd cleaned off the wooden steps that lead down the hill to the creek:

The chain link fence to the left is a dog kennel--I can't WAIT to get that out of there, but I'm afraid it will be a major undertaking. When we get that cleaned out, I'd like to do a little woodland gardening down there...nothing formal at all, just some ferns and maybe some blossoming trees or shrubs (rhododendrons?). Stuff that will look like it came up naturally in the wilderness! It would be lovely to have a bench or picnic table or some sort of spot to sit and enjoy the shade, too...although the neighbors say that the mosquitoes swarm around the little creek down there. Ugh.

One of the neighbors on the other side of the creek told Todd the other day that that neighborhood was where they housed the Mercury astronauts when they came for their training at Langley. Thus I assume that neighborhood is much older than ours, but I've never actually been over there--just gazed at the backs of the homes through the trees. Our library up the road is named for Gus Grissom (and is pure 1960s industrial-grade architecture--ug-LEE) but I never figured there was such a close connection to this neighborhood. Kind of cool!