Finally gardening

We finally got some warm weather around here.  I've been planting seeds in the basement since March.  Spring is almost 6 weeks later than last year, though this is the normal time for it.  The forsythia have gone to town.  They are really lovely.

I've been working on cleaning up flower beds and dead spaces left by neglect.  Case in point is the backdoor below.  This is a dark, windswept corner.  The black area is where all the mulch blew off over the winter.  I think it will be a challenge to keep anything going, but I'm giving it a go. 

Here's the after.  Not much to look at yet, but I opted for smaller, cheaper hostas than the bigger ones.  I put in 8 different varieties.  I also got a great deal on some partially frozen heuchera.  The planter has dusty miller and some ivy.  Eventually the caladium bulbs will come up.  This area gets about 15 minutes of sun a day, but I think everything will do well.  I might fill in with some begonias later on. 

 Looking away from the door. 

Looking toward the corner.  There used to be a random scraggly shrub and a volunteer tree.  I cut those out as best I could and treated the stump.  You can see the white circle that's left.  I hope once the stump rots a bit that I can straighten out the downspout extension.  

On the left hand side of the walk is a narrow strip.  I don't hold much hope for these plants.  There's 4 small hostas here.  The soil is really dreadful.  

 My other weekend project was finally painting the front door.  I got the paint last fall, but ran out of warm weekends to do it.  This is the before with our swatches.  We had a running tally on the fridge. It was really entertaining.  The UPS guy liked Plumage, the TV repair guy and most of the trick-or-treaters voted for Rainstorm.  I think the third one was called Kingfisher.

The winner was Rainstorm. 

Here it is finished: 

And closer: 

 It was a pretty quick project even though it took three coats of paint like everything else in the house.  Next up, I'm putting in a vegetable garden and flowers, and fixing the years of general neglect.  Lots of pruning in my future. 

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