Digging, raking, and planting, oh my!

We always planned on having a flower bed in front of this fence, but we had Noah & immediately moved into the house...and life goes on. We decided to tackle the bed today. Understand that at 8 am in the morning this entire LONG flowerbed was filled with grass. And digging out sod is no easy task. All I can say is, Michael is amazing. He starting digging sod out of this bed at 8 am. THEN he went and got 2 loads of dirt because the bed slopes and he wanted it at an even grade. (How he figures all that out is beyond me. My brain doesn't work that way. I just know that I want to create...HE finds a way to make it happen.) We raked out all the leftover grass and added the 2 loads of dirt. Then we dug 14 holes and planted 14 of our newest Encore Azaela, Autumn Princess. His work wasn't done then, either. There is a drainage issue due to some dam that a neighbor built, so he wanted to fix that. He designed the bed to fix the drainage problem, but it required burying a TON of pipe. So at the end of it all, he dug a trench for the pipe & put the pipe in the trench. He spent about 13 hours in the hot Texas sun to get our project done. I don't know HOW he did it. He works harder than any 3 yard men I could buy! It doesn't look like much here, but even getting to this point took a LOT of work! This was 100% grass before Michael dug it out. Digging out sod is tough!

It's getting dark here. Michael has all the azaelas planted and is digging a long trench for the pipe. The next step tomorrow is to cover the pipe, and get to the nursery to pick out some climbing roses. This area is perfect sun for roses, so I thought we'd plant some climbers for some vertical visual height.

Noah loved being outside & helped by mowing.

After he finished, Michael's step-mom came to play with Noah so that I could help Michael dig, rake, & plant.