Our Mother's Day Present...

So, for Mother's Day, Rebecca and I got ourselves a gardener to plant some plants in our backyard.  It turns out we are too out of shape to do this ourselves...and it was nearly 100 degrees outside today!  We have been working on this yard for a year and a half...

This is what it looked like when we bought the house (it was a foreclosure)....  We removed all the rock (probably 12 tons, and most of the bushes a year ago....

 The trees were not doing well without water....

A stolen spa left a weird unpainted space on the patio...and what is that extra wood fencing in the background??  No idea...

We had the house painted and we installed grass last summer...that involved re-plumbing the entire yard with soft and hard line and adding curbing...Rebecca and I also installed the sod....

This year we planted more Photinia around the perimeter of the yard...and more plants around the patio.  We had gardeners put in the plants but we did the preliminary irrigation...The back tree and bushes were there from last year.  Yes, that is a dog bed that Buddy doesn't use.  We will finish this section next year when we have a brilliant idea about it....

The covers were painted last year...perimeter plants!

Now you can see the grass we put in last summer.  More plants!

The little flowers in the back are Lantana--the most durable desert flower available.  When it is hot as hell, they grow like crazy!  Love em....and they come in lots of colors--purple, yellow, red/orange/yellow, deep red, pink/peach/yellow....I'll post pics when they are in full bloom.

Lots of Lily of the Nile flowers....since it is a shady area they should survive the summer....

We needed another Photinia but all they could fit in the empty spot along the wall was a little one due to the foundation of the wall coming nearly out to the curbing.....LOL!

Our side yard without all the nasty rock.  The trees are doing awesome!  African Sumac and a Chaste tree....the purple flowers will be on the chaste tree soon.  I'll post pics...the bench is heavy as hell and I've been dragging it from house to house for a few years.  It is made from an old Mexican door....awesome!

We are going to install outdoor carpet on the back patio...maybe next weekend??  Anyhow, this was our Mother's Day present to each other this year....fantastic!!  We have finished about 60% of the yard...yeah!  There are only a few more weeks before the wicked heat of summer makes it nearly impossible to work outside so I'm glad this is done.  Happy Mother's Day to all you Moms!