The next step in our backyard evolution

Today's exercise schedule.  Sweet.  Keep that in mind.

Now, let's switch topics.  Cause that's fun ;-P

So I love flowers and have a *great* respect for stunning gardens.  I also, have zero flower design ability.  Made far worse by the fact that I also have zero flower knowledge.   So after being unhappy with the results of my garden design efforts in both Burlington and Oakville, I got smarter this time.   We have a lovely blank slate full of possibilities, I'd rather just skip the learning curve.  Lol so we hired a designer to plan our garden for us.   She came out and spent several hours here -- we knew where we wanted it to be (general shape and size), but colours, style, etc etc.   Took a ton of pictures and came up with a design for us that was exceptionally well done for complete novices since they layered the images of the design on to the phots of our yard, so we could literally see what it would look like.  She also told us what colours we We went back and forth on some minor details and then good to go.

So fast-forward to this week when the plants were being delivered.   Originally that was going to happen last Thursday but... weather.  It's Canada.  Who's surprised?   So plants came this am, and the pros carved off the sod and put down some soil so we got a cheater start :).  They also, importantly, placed all the plants where they should be planted.   And it looked SO good.

Starting to be real

The designer put everything in place, so idiot-proofed it as much as possible ;)

While the back was being idiot-proofed, we could start on the front.   This one was far less intimidating for sure.  It's a shade garden, so a very different design, but I have high hopes it'll look awesome :)

The front when we'd finished

Our friend Janie came over to help and we took on the back yard.  With three of us, it wasn't nearly as bad as I'd feared.  Esp with fresh soil (our yard is clay, so the extra layer makes it less digging into the clay).  Win.   Dig a few holes, check that it looks right, bone meal, water, plant, soil, water again.  Rinse and repeat.

We started with the narrow part of the garden...

And then moved onto the wider section :)

We were SO excited to be done (for today),
when I realized Sasha was struggling with the pond

So I moved one plant and built her a garden path.
Spoiled?  Perhaps.  But she deserves it.  And Tucker will use it too ;-P

And also a couple other trees that will hopefully grow up
before the giant willow is inevitably chopped down at some point.

So we got a TON done and I'm so excited about how it works.  HUGE thanks to Janie for all the help!  Next steps are to put down mulch and acquire and place the stones to surround the rest of the garden.   And ALL the watering *sigh*.  That bill will NOT be fun again this year.

Now - remember today's exercise plan?   So...  I feel like the rest part might've been a fail, even if my watch tells me I haven't done enough yet ;-P.  It doesn't always reflect reality *g*.   As for the rest?  I mean, I *definitely* went outside ;-P.  I threw the ball for Sasha a ton of times, that counts as playing right?   And we're not going to talk about "nourishing food" today.  lol

I'll give you one guess what we had for dinner ;-P