my dad will be so proud...

My Father is an amazing gardener. This is a combination of green thumb, enjoying working outside, and his particular nature. His yard is always incredibly groomed, from lawn to the several gorgeous flower beds throughout the yard.

Although I have many of my Dad's traits, I do not think that the green thumb is one of them. I've killed every houseplant I've ever owned. A year ago we had 3 plants on the bay window in the sunroom. They're all dead. The last one got thrown away this morning - according to Dennis, Tommy tried to take a bite of the brown dried leaves and started gagging until he coughed them back up.

In college Dennis gave me flowers. I put them on my desk and left them there until the water turned murky brown and smelled like rot. The petals all fell off.

Dennis is no better. He had a plant on his desk at work named "lettuce". He watered it constantly and eventually it got bugs. His solution? Spray it with Windex. It killed the bugs, also - lettuce.

Every fall I decide to plant a beautiful mum in this giant pot and put it on the front steps (first at our N. Andover apartment, then at our house). I obviously can't be bothered to water the damn thing and by Halloween it turns into a pot of dead mum - and it usually haunts our front steps until the snow flies.

Last summer Dad came over because (surprise surprise) some of our flower beds were getting out of control.

But first - here's the layout. Our yard is divided into 4 basic flower areas.

This is next to our kitchen door. My plan is to get rid of this grass in front of the bed. I want to plant some colorful annuals, plus, it's a pain to mow.


The front of the house. This is one of the areas Dad had to fix. It was covered in weeds, and these ugly pine bush things. We (Dad) dug up the ugly pine things and planted these cute dwarf pines. Apparently they never have to be trimmed - score! Side note... under the ugly pine things was a massive nest of bees. We (Dad) got stung many many times.

This is an area we call "the circle". It's full of day lilies. A year ago it was also filled with weeds almost as tall as me. (I'm not short.) Dad fixed it, pulling the weeds and spreading bark mulch. Now it's lovely.


OK. Below is what will make him proud. I edged the fourth area (surrounding the deck). I played a little game called "weed or flower?" and pulled what I believed to be weeds. I put a nice edge in and hopefully it stays beautiful all summer!