We spent the weekend digging up the backyard in preparation for a patio. Fun. (A big ‘thank you’ to my mom for helping us yesterday though!)

Related: What does one do with a huge pile of dirt?

We’re not even finished with the digging (we need to get down to 8″). Which means there will be even more dirt. Boo.

The weeds have been plucked and the plants are in the ground. Our garden is on its way to greatness. Or mediocrity. Time will tell.

Here’s the view from the front.

That huge bush is the neighbor’s red twig dogwood. While we don’t mind ‘sharing’ it in our garden, we aren’t all that fond of the abandoned compost heap at the front of their yard. Eventually (in oh, 10 years or so?) the boxwood should grow big enough to hide it.

Our iron sphere from Pot-Ted is as amazing as I had hoped. Brandon and I both love it. Even my sister, who thought it was incredibly stupid for us to spend money on a “big metal ball”, admitted to liking it.

Right now it’s the largest thing in the garden, but it will look great once everything else grows and catches up in size and scale.

I made a border at the edge out of bricks we had found in the dirt as we prepared the area.

Now I need to have patience. Everything looks so tiny right now. I put the mulch down to discourage the weeds from returning aggressively, but hopefully the little plants will still be able to grow and spread out a bit.

I hope the flowers make it! It still seems so strange to me that we will have plants growing in our garden. THAT I PUT THERE. And they may even flower for me. How odd.

I’m almost done clearing out the weeds along the side to make room for my flowers (for the second time this year). This is the plan:

The flowers in pen are the ones we’ve purchased, and the ones in pencil are tentatively planned for next year. I also left some room for future (undetermined as of yet) flowers.

The photo below is actually from a couple of weeks ago. It had gotten even worse since then.

I’m heading back out now to finish!