In an attempt to stop my parents’ dogs when they are here from going under the fence (the dog that lives behind us is furiously trying to dig a hole under our fence) and create a better space in the moss pit corner of our yard, the boys and I spent Sunday afternoon building a new flower bed area:

Now I’m on a mission to find plants that will survive in this area (it doesn’t get a lot of sun). Here is my collage of shade loving plants that I have on my list to look for at Lowe’s with the boys over Spring Break:

So if you remember last year, I planted two new boxwood plants in our front garden bed and pulled out the dead plants. In this photo you can see me standing in the middle of a hot mess of scraggly plants that continued down that route for the next year. They were, I think, supposed to be ground cover, or maybe little bushes, but what they turned into was a bunch of weeds that popped up all over the front bed and I could never get them to not look messy.

Flash forward to this Spring:

J and I headed to Lowe’s to pick out new boxwoods, new ground cover, and new flowers. J is a surprisingly good plant selector, or at least quite a decisive one (“Pick that one, Mommy! Now let’s go to the water!”).

He also made a friend that I’ve got to put on my list to go back and pick up for him:

The sunning turtle you see on the left, J talked about the whole way home.

After picking out two new boxwoods, four ground cover/grass-like plants, and four snapdragons, we were good to go:

And headed home to start pulling out the old plants and place the new:

J loves to do these types of things, so he was right next to me pulling plants and digging holes for the new plants. He especially loved clearing away the dirt and I think we were pretty much covered in dirt by the end of it.

After filling three large contractor bags with the old plants we placed the new:

And managed to get them all planted before the rain:

We need to get some fresh mulch for the top, and I’m hoping my one little scraggly boxwood in the corner comes back, but it is definitely an improvement!

Despite the fact that it looks a bit scraggly, our group of potted plants are actually doing really well! This group of flowers attracts lots of moths and butterflies..

And the purple flowers have added a great pop of color to the mix…

And against all odds, we have tomatoes growing! From the plants we thought had died! Amazing!