This One is Going to Cost Me!

I discovered the coolest new toy today! Have you seen this? It's the Lowe's Garden Planner. I have spent the morning laying out my house, the fence, the patio, the driveway, and all without taking any real measurements! It's okay though, I only want an approximation of what I can do.

I got the idea to poke around on the Lowe's site because we are redoing out front yard flower beds. We wanted to use stone to surround them. I think they look great. Check out the after.


Before featured a pathetic black rubber border that didn't serve much purpose beyond annoying the heck out of me. It wouldn't stay in the ground and it did absolutely nothing in the way of keeping the grass out of the flower beds.

Now we have new lovely, castle style stones bordering the beds. We also leveled and raised the beds with manure (SSCB pronounces this muh-NOOR, which cracks me up, but I don't know why). This will enrich the soil and also improve the drainage, or so SSCB says. I'll just take his word for it. I am mostly concerned about what we will be planting this year.

Truth be told, I am not a big fan of the bushes that are in our front beds, except for the dwarf nandina that we planted. Sadly, they were already there and mature when we moved in. We could remove them, but it would be a huge pain, so I live with it. I would however like to have a few words with the genius that decided it would be a great idea to plant holly berry bushes in front of the outside faucet. Everytime we go to turn the water on we come in looking like we lost a cat fight.

Which reminds me of the best lines in the movie I, Robot:

[Detective Spooner enters Calvin's home after the demo-bot destroyed Lanning's house... with him in it. His head is bleeding and he looks really bad]
Detective Spooner: Hey, do you like cats?
Susan Calvin: What?
Detective Spooner: Cats, do you like 'em?
Susan Calvin: No, I'm allergic. You're saying cats did this to you?
Detective Spooner: How the he!! would cats do this to me? Are you crazy?
Susan Calvin: Why are we talking about cats?
Detective Spooner: [as if it were the most natural thing] Because I have a cat in my trunk and he's homeless.

Sorry about that...

Anyway, now, I am inspired and wanted to see what I could come up with to do in our side yards, which are pretty much bare right now. I think they need some work, which usually translates into money spent and back-breaking labor for poor SSCB. Awwwwwwwww.

So, as we put in our new flower beds someday I will be sure to post before and afters of that, okay?