Breaking ground.

The digging has started and I've already gotten quite a bit accomplished on day one of the front yard overhaul.  The path cutting through the large front border is going to be about 4 feet wide and the bed is about 12 feet across so it's quite a bit of space to work on.  One good part of digging up so many plants is that this had been an area I wasn't all that happy with.  Many of the plants had gotten too large for the space or ended up in either too much or too little sun.  I'm already liking how the plantings are going to look, I'm paying much more attention to bloom time and size now than I did over the last 11 years of planting in this bed.  The only thing I really hated to move was a big peony, I'm guessing it won't bloom this year, although I tried to get a large root ball on it in hopes that it won't go too badly into shock.

Everything between the X's must go.  There are two rows of these edging stones, the first one is almost level with the grass.  Winter interest is about zero here, hopefully with a little more thought it will look better in all seasons.

From the front you can see it's the largest plants in the bed that need to moved.  The Mexican Orange (Choysia ternata) has grown huge in the few years it's been here but had a very small root ball for its size.  I never realized how good the foliage from this plant smelled until I started working around it.

 The Hydrangea 'Preziosa' (one of my favorite Hydrangeas) is now under the Dogwood tree.  I think it will be much happier there with a little afternoon shade.

 Somewhere in there are Allium bulbs and a Lupine, hopefully I can find them without doing any damage.  Most of the plants that were removed are in pots set in the flower bed, it shouldn't get too cold in the next few days and hopefully I'll get them planted by Friday.  I didn't realize I was being watched by Gracie while I was working until I uploaded the pictures, you can just see her face peeking out the window.

The plan for tomorrow will be to mark the area that will be the path with stakes and twine so that I can make it even, especially since it's right in front of our house.  My husband will never let me forget how I tried to make a path in our backyard, which I wasn't paying attention to as I worked, and it ended up being way too narrow and kind of silly looking. Tomorrow's weather looks like it should be another mild day with sun.

Getting ready to get to work.

After a rainy weekend it looks like the sun will be out for the next several days.  The rainy weather was perfect though for more planning of the front garden.  My husband aka the Muscle spent a lot of time measuring and plotting out just where everything will be going.  This is getting very exciting knowing that the dream of a picket fence and more gardening space is becoming a reality.  We will all get to use our muscles over the next month as we begin the work, most of which will be good old manual labor.
I could see out my bedroom window over the weekend that another Hellebore has started blooming, so when I went out to take some before pictures of the front yard I walked through the backyard to take a look.

Hellebore 'Mardi Gras Double' is just as pretty as I remember it.

Pretty from any angle, I realized just how hard Hellebores make us work for a good picture of their face.

Holding the camera underneath for a picture shows a bug's eye view of the flower.

The lighting on the pond was very pretty today.  The Dutch Iris foliage is up all around the pond.

A view down the side yard shows some of the picket fence sections that will enclose the front yard.  It will eventually be painted white and is much easier to install in sections rather than trying to do it picket by picket.  Luckily I had just cleaned this area up a week ago, it may be awhile before I can do much else over here.

While at Michael's Craft store I found a few new garden additions.  I plan to hang the little sign on the picket fence gate.

Tomorrow if the weather holds I will begin removing the stone edging from where the path will cut through the front border.  Next will be moving some plants.  This isn't the best time of year for that, but around here the saying with gardeners is "as long as the ground isn't frozen it's okay to move plants".  Now we'll just hope the ground doesn't freeze after they are moved.

Some early winter color.

This past weekend the plans for the front yard "overhaul" were officially started.   There will be less grass (as in none) and more planting beds and a picket fence.  We even ordered some grow lights and shelves so that I'll be able to start more from seed.  Our hope is that we can grow more vegetables in our front yard where it is full sun.  My hope is that I can convince my husband that he will get to be in charge of the vegetable garden, explaining that watering and weeding those beds will be a great time to unwind after a stressful day at work.  I even threw in the suggestion of having a beer while he did those things.  Now I hope that we'll have a nice dry week either late winter or early spring when we can get started. 
Until then we are having another nice stretch of dry sunny weather and everyone around here has headed out to their gardens to get a head start on weeding.  The Littlest Gardener and I worked in the side yard and path garden weeding and cutting back plants.  Again I was amazed at all that was going on.  Almost all of the Clematises have new growth, the ribes leaves are starting to open, the blueberry bushes all have leaf buds - some even beginning to open and more bulbs are making their way out of the ground.

 Hellebore 'Royal Heritage'

 Hellebore - this was a seedling from some of the 'Royal Heritage', I found lots of seedling in this area.

 Another Hellebore 'Blue Lady'

 The Greigii tulips that I found at the grocery store are coming up through Dianthus 'Sooty'.

 Purple Wood Spurge growing in a container has pretty purple new growth

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 Primroses sitting in the sun waiting to be planted.

 The Littlest Gardener planting more of the Sword Fern, I'm hoping some of them do come up.

 The Pansies seem to have recovered from the cold we had a while ago.

Violas in one of my "girl" planters.

I realize that a lot of the country is having terrible blizzards and ice, but hopefully seeing this little bit of color will help.  We are definitely still at risk of snow here, in fact it will be in the 20's the next couple of nights.  February is generally a very cold month here so hopefully all this winter color will survive whatever weather comes our way.