Laboring on Labor Day

I mentioned in my last post that we tackled some landscaping over the holiday weekend. What an adventure!! It all started when Brad's dad decided he wanted to mow the lawn to help out... What a guy!

Well after the lawn mowing we discovered that we had a lawn pest problem so we went to trusty ol' google and found that our lawn was infested with Two Striped Spittle Bugs... a common South Carolina lawn pest. So that spurred a trip to Lowe's for Father and Son to get something to rid the lawn of the spittle bugs.

Next thing I know I am getting a call from Brad wanting us to meet them back up at Lowe's to look at the new shipment of bushes that just came in. We have had a couple of landscaping projects in mind but haven't gotten around to them with everything else going on. So off to Lowe's we went.

Long story short... Here are the before and after pics. HGTV eat your heart out!

Before:

After:

We planted some Indian Hawthorns as a back drop, a crepe myrtle, two butterfly bushes, and 22 tufts of decorative Liropa grass as a border. Then Brad and his dad wired in the landscape lighting so that we have two spotlights shining on the tree and 6 path lights that illuminate the flagstone wall. We also dug out around the wall where the lights go and planted some magic carpet thyme as ground cover. What a day! Thanks for all the help Maw and Paw!!

The next day we were all a little tired of landscaping but I decided that I was going to figure out what we anted to do with the front bed which had also needed some work. I had been keeping my potted plants in this bed so that while I travel they will get watered. I lifted out the potted plant and got a little surprise... A SNAKE!!! It was just a little baby but I wanted nothing to do with it! I called Brad and he got the rake and was moving the pine straw trying to find it when he stumbled upon Mama. A full grown mama cotton mouth snake. In our flower bed. Brad's Dad was the brave one who killed the Mama and then Brad found the baby and made sure it was gone too. Glad that issue is taken care of! Since the flower bed was now thoroughly torn apart the guys put in all the bushes for that bed and even got adventurous and installed a better sprinkler set up for the bed. Wow! Good work!

Sorry... No before pics on this but the only thing there previously were the 4 green bushes.

Here you can see one of the two elevated sprinklers they installed in each corner.