April Showers

April definitely was a month of "April Showers" which is bringing many "May Flowers."  Unfortunately, we also had a lot of snow storms in April, which almost killed all of our flowers.  Luckily they survived, and are making a comeback now.  The weather was all over the place.  We were sunny and in the 70's, then cold, snowing and below freezing again.  They sunny days sure got us excited for Spring/Summer and warm weather again.  We have been trying to work on our yard/lawn again and it's finally coming along.  Thankfully most of the flowers we planted last year came back, and are thriving now.  Here are some pics of our yard/lawn in progress:

Some tulips coming in.  They were here last year, but I wasn't sure if they'd come back since we put ground cover and mulch down over then, but luckily they did, and it made me very happy to see!

We made a garden box and planted a couple things: Strawberries, peppers and tomatoes.

My cute boys next to our tulips.

Silly boys both pulling faces :)

The tulips on our front porch coming in, along w/ our Dianthus and Day Lilies we planted last year.  I was so excited to see them come back, and they are more full than they were last year.  We even had some purple tulips up front on the side yard.  So pretty!

We decided to plant a pear tree since we all love pears so much!

Our garden coming along.

And then it snowed a couple days later!

Our poor little tulips were not happy about the snow.  Don't they look so sad?

Luckily the snow melted and the flowers came back.  Our Tulips and Lilac bush.

As it warmed up we decided to attack more of our "jungle" in the back.  Steve ripped out the ivy in the corner of our yard.  It was everywhere and climbing over to 2 of our neighbor's yards as well.  It was nice to finally get it out.  It sure makes the yard feel bigger with it gone.  We had another city "dump/garbage pick up" so we were able to get of a lot of it then.

Nyles helping to cut up the twigs that Steve pull out. 

 We had a family clean up day out in our yard one Saturday as well.  Steve worked on getting the rest of the ivy/weeds out, while I mowed the lawn, planted Irises and scrapped up the dead lawn.  Carter enjoyed being outside just jumping and playing.  Nyles helped where he could as well.

Carter loves being outside, and loves jumping.

Getting closer to planting our pear tree where we cleared out the ivy.

We cleaned up the area by the faucet and put in a hose rack, and put rocks and pavers around it.  

We also added new mulch around the flower beds.

 

Tulips I moved over to the side yard from up where the trees were cut down.  

Steve weeded, put ground cover and then new mulch down as well.

Still working around the pear tree.  Notice the dead grass.  We killed most of it in the front yard and some in the back yard.  Steve seeded the grass in the front, but we wanted to wait to see how it did before doing the back.

Steve likes to get down and close when he's working.  He's pulling out weeds and straw from the front yard (which was protecting our grass seed), which had blown to other areas. 

More pretty Tulips up front, white and red.  Notice the lovely straw in the flower bed.  

You can kindof see the grass growing behind it.

Our grass seed under the straw, our Tulips coming in and Dianthus flowers, our grass on the left we sodded last year after pulling out the bushes, and the pretty trees up front.

The grass up by the purple trees was pretty much dead also, so Steve decided to tear it out and sod it one day.  He raked it out, leveled it, then put in the new grass.  All before I got home from work one day.  Pretty productive day I'd say!

Getting the sod into place.

Nyles loves being outside and helping Steve w/ the yard.

Beautiful!  It was a surprise for me when I got back from work.  

Our yard is coming along a little at a time.