They're juicy and healthy and cute

sprinklers in action on the back "lawn"

Tres has been hard at work on our yard these past few weekends. Now, when I say yard, I should specify that up until this point we have done no landscaping, other than putting in the garden last year. After the house was finished, he put out some grass seed and we've had a lawn that's about the equivalent of an adolescent boy's facial hair  up until this point. Now that the weather's getting nice and it's a more appropriate growing season (and he actually has a spare moment), Tres is getting serious. For the past month, he has spent most of every weekend installing a sprinkler system, which will automatically water the lawn and plants around the house. It was  a pretty Sisyphean task (yay, digging in the sand!), complicated by the fact that he was working by himself, but he did a wonderful job and now we can get to the (mostly) fun part: adding plants! Our landscaping hopes/requirements are twofold: anything we put in should be easy to maintain and functional whenever possible.

 forsythia (up close to the house) and peach

Our first addition was one of my spring favorites, a forsythia bush. Aside from being just pretty to look at, I love that forsythia are one of the harbingers of spring, providing a burst of color just when you need it the most. They're also quite easy to maintain and do well in our climate. I've joked that buying our first plant from a nursery has made me officially feel like a grown up and (while I know that some of the other experiences of the past year  have been perhaps a bit more life-changing) I'm really only half kidding - there's something very adult feeling about planting things that will take years to mature and become useful.

 blackberries (look for the bright green tags)

 raspberries

Which brings us to our acquisitions of the past two weekends, fruit trees and berry bushes! Well, berry sticks, really, but, assuming all goes well, they should grow into bushes. These fit our requirements perhaps a bit better than the forsythia (although I would argue that improving aesthetics is useful too, so long as the plant is low maintenance) and we are really excited at their prospects. Of course, as I mentioned above, we will not be seeing the fruits of our labors (so to speak - heh) for a few years. We're looking forward to D'Anjou and Bartlett pears, Redhaven peaches, three varieties of cherry (Vans, Montmorencies, and Black Republicans - it's a  super neat grafted tree), blackberries, and raspberries someday.

 cherry

pears (D'Anjou on left, Bartlett on right)

Tres has done all of this work himself and it's been quite the job, made all the less pleasant by the fact that he'd much rather be working in the garden. I'm so admiring of his hard work and excited to do my part as harvester, preserver, and eater in the next few years.

Silas is excited too