Simple-But-Cute Mailbox Flower Bed

I've recently gotten back into taking ~2 mile walks/jogs around our neighborhood a few evenings a week, just to stretch my legs, but not do anything too strenuous in the heat of summer. And while on one of my jaunts around the neighborhood, I was inspired by a neighbor's simple-but-cute mailbox flower bed. So I made my own in our yard!

 House numbers blurred for privacy

Working With A Landscape Designer

Almost a month ago we had a great meeting with a landscape designer to put together a plan for our front yard. If you remember, our yard is in some serious need of help.

Taken in mid-March. Things are a little greener now that the leaves have filled in, but there still isn't much going on at the ground level.

So far it's been a really great experience, so I thought I'd share the process!

Come On Baby, Light My Fire!

Sorry for the corny post title, but I just couldn't help it. We finally got to use our fire pit! Whoo hoo!

It's still not 100% done (even phase 1 still needs a few finishing touches, and it will be a while before phase 2 happens and we go back and put down paver stones or flagstones on the surface area), but it's finally a usable space.

We went from this three weeks ago:

To this on Sunday:

Just go ahead and ignore that big pile of dirt in the background. And the tree stump. The dirt pile will be going away (or leveled out and covered with leaves), and we're going to turn the tree stump into a little side table, once our supplies arrive in the mail.

Memorial Day Weekend in Photos (Fire Pit Progress)

Hope everyone had a very nice long weekend! Here's what we were up to.

Friday afternoon: two pallets of supplies were delivered.

Friday evening: trench digging.

Lower 18 foot long by 12 inch wide by 5 inches deep trench complete.

{Weekend Recap} Fire Pit Prepping

Well, we had a very productive weekend! We spent both days prepping for our big Memorial Day Weekend project: building two retaining walls and our fire pit area.

Saturday morning we were up early to check out the nearby garage sales (no luck though, since we were only looking for big furniture pieces that we could refinish). Then we visited two landscaping supply yards and a garden center, looking at paver stone options for our retaining walls. Unfortunately none of these places had very many options for pavers to build walls with a slight curve, mostly we found rectangular shaped pavers, and lots of flagstone and natural rocks. And their prices weren't really better than what we'd seen at Lowes the previous weekend.

But luckily we decided to try Home Depot, to see what their selection and prices looked like, and we found our pavers! They are a nice color blend of greys, reds and browns, so they will blend into the surrounding natural landscape really well, and they were only $1.18 each! We'd been budgeting for $2 pavers, and even though these are slightly smaller, so we need to use more (only 3 inches high, instead of 4), it's still a savings over what we found at the stone yards and Lowes.

We bought 300 pavers, along with 10 bags of paver base, and 20 bags of small decorative rocks which will cover the finished fire pit area (although someday we may replace the decorative rocks with a paver stone patio, but that will be in phase 2 of the project, and we have a feeling we may end up liking the more natural rock surface even more than we would a patio.).

I've Been Trying To Have A Green Thumb, For All The Wrong Reasons

Let me just start by saying, typically I have a black thumb. Plants don't like me. I've even managed to kill a cactus! Several, in fact.

And the plant my parents so kindly sent me as a birthday/moving gift in April? It's like, half alive. (sorry Mom!)

I totally don't know what's going on with it, maybe I over watered it? But the right side is looking alright, so who knows. My SIL is coming over this weekend, and she's like a plant goddess, so maybe she can tell me what I'm doing wrong. Or, maybe she can confirm my suspicions that most plants just hate me.

But lately, I've been making an effort to have a green thumb. For all the wrong reasons though.

See, when we first moved here, one of our neighbors told us that there's deer in the area. We have a small amount of woods behind our house, maybe a couple acres, with more houses on the other side, and according to our neighbor, the deer hang out in there, and come out sometimes to eat their flowers.

Well, the animal lover in me was inspired!

I decided I was going to get some flowers from the hardware store, to entice the deer to our yard! So that's exactly what I did. I also got a salt lick block, that's supposed to attract deer too. However, my husband didn't want to piss off our neighbors (What? Doesn't everyone want deer to eat their flowers?), so he made me put it in a planter box, so it wasn't so obvious I was just begging deer to come visit us. Supposedly the deer like to eat the dirt that is salt flavored too, so I didn't object too much.

(Do deer like potting soil? At least these handy planters were left on our back patio by the last people who lived here though!)

(Making sure there was a space for the salt block, before removing the plastic wrapping. I also planted the flowers in just this planter in the plastic containers they came in, so they'd be less exposed to the salt that might kill them.)

After planting the plants and salt block, I placed the planters out where our grass and the woods meet. Inviting for the deer, and still in a position that I could see the deer from any window at the back of our house.

(Rascal wishes he could see the deer too)

And sure enough, about a week later, someone had munched one of the plants down almost to it's roots!

But the salt lick wasn't even touched. WTH, deer?

And maybe a week after that, something struck again, and another one of the planter flowers was missing some buds. The looked like they were just nipped off.

But I still hadn't seen any deer, and the salt lick was still not licked. And I planted these flowers like 1 1/2 months ago! On the plus side though, the ones that haven't been eaten are still alive. Except I think that's mainly due to the occasional rain and the fact that my husband has been watering them after his weekly lawn mowing. Definitely not thanks to me, but maybe that's the key to me having a green thumb. Don't actually come into contact with the plants!

Finally though, this week there was some action with the salt lick. I'd looked out our bathroom window at around 5:30am, and nothing was amiss (I've been obsessively checking the flowers every day when I wake up to use the bathroom). But when I actually got up for the day several hours later, look what I saw!

The salt lick has been licked!

If only I'd actually gotten to see it happen though. :(

I think the next step is going to have to be convincing my husband to make me a motion sensor that I can hook up to my camera, then I can finally see the elusive deer! And probably also cats, bunnies, turtles and whatever else walks through our yard at night. But I'm determined, I want to see these dang deer already!

The good news is though my efforts at having a green thumb haven't produced a deer sighting yet, I've also been trying in other areas of our yard. These are big steps here, people. I've been way too spoiled by having a gardening service included in our rent for the past 4 years at our old house.

One thing we've done is we sprinkled some really thin grass right next to our patio with this blue colored Perfect Patch seed stuff (yes, it's an As Seen On TV product).

And about three weeks later, it really worked! Here is a side by side before and after:

And I also made, like, the biggest sacrifice ever. Well, not ever, but I did give up about 4 hours of my time (and about 2 hours of my husband's time) and suffered an aching back, to weed our front stone walkway. This was a seriously big step for me, because I hate, hate, HATE weeding. I still remember my parents paying me a penny for every weed I pulled when I was a little kid, and I detested it, even with the cash bribes.

But now I'm a responsible grown up, who has to take care of things. So I begrudgingly weeded for hours and hours, only stopping to complain and rest in the shade about every 10 minutes. It really wasn't that bad, but I think holding a Mike's Hard Cherry Lemonade in my other hand helped a lot. That's what I must have been missing as a kid! ;)

Here's another before and after comparison. I'm dang proud of this accomplishment, cause it really did look like crap before!

You better believe I poured 2 bottles worth of weed killer in the cracks between the rocks though! No way am I subjecting myself to the torture of weeding again if I don't have to, drink in hand or not!

So there you have it, proof of my green thumb in the making. Or proof that I am trying way too hard to get deer into our yard! Don't most people have the opposite problem, with trying to get deer to stay out?

Do you ever spot deer in your own yard? If so, got any suggestions about what is attracting them? My dad suggested this C'Mere Deer stuff he saw on a hunting show, but I don't know if I want to spend $25 for a gallon of the stuff. Especially when everyone else seems to get deer for free!