Loki's Backyard: Adding Flowers

It's been a while since we did this, but I'm just getting around to putting up the pictures. I should clean my camera's memory more often. Note to self.
Anyway- after the fence and patio were finished, it was time to add some more fun things to the backyard and give it a little more personality. The big guy and some friends cut some flower beds on either side of the patio. Pretty grueling work, especially in the hot summer sun. Once the beds were cut and ready, we went shopping for flowers and plants.

A quick trip to Lowe's and soem discussion over color scheme and annuals vs. perennials, we were on our way home. We decided to start with some perennials and had 3 hydrangeas, one Japanese lilac tree, one Japanese blood maple, 3 arbor vitae, and an elderberry balck lace bush. I may have gotten some of the names wrong, but I think that's everything.

All will get much bigger with proper tending, and build up a little more privacy around the patio, and especially the area where we plan to put the hot tub.

This spot will hold the Japanese blood maple.

Our Japanese lilac.

We found these solar lights at Wal-Mart. They've got a clean modern feel to them, and I love the way the coppery finish plays against the grays in the patio. You can see a little bit of one of the chairs in our patio set. More about that later.

Loki does an excellent job supervising whenever there's work going on. He's very particular about what we do with his backyard. Perhaps the blog has gone to his head.

The black lace edlerberry bush

Our supplies. Lots and lots of potting soil to add the dirt we already had. We've got clay about two feet down, so we're hoping this will help give the plants more of what they need. We may to incorporate some Miracle Grow as well, but we'll see.

One of our hydrangeas waiting to be planted and some very dirty gardening gloves.

This is the Japanese blood maple waiting to be planted. The bucket it's in actually served dual purpose that day and helped to haul some of the dirt/grass away while the beds were being cut. A pretty far departure from holding kegs, which incidently is what we originally bought it for.

Look at us turning into grown ups.