Mom's summer project

During the summer, mom usually tackles one big project in the yard. This year, she's taking summer classes so the project had to be smaller. It turned out to be bigger than she thought. 

See all that ivy on the fence? It was all over the yard. See that bare dirt? Covered in ivy.

From the fence on the right past the brown thing (porch swing) on the left was all ivy. 

Here it is with all the ivy gone. 54 bags of yard waste. Three trips to the landfill (the ivy had swallowed a lot of stuff). Four hours with the tiller to try to get rid of the roots. 

Here it is after!

 The grass is starting to come back in the bare spots. 

 See those wooden scallops? 

A previous owner had established a bed here once and planted ivy. 

Yeah, thanks. 

The bed is almost all shade so mom had to really think about what plants she wanted. 

 So here are the plants to get the bed started.

This is a Macho fern. It should get about 3 feet tall and wide. It's huge!

These are pieris japonica. When they bloom, the flowers will be pink!

 This is dead nettle. It already has teeny pink blooms already. Apparently, you can eat this too. 

This is astilbe. There are three of these, two are pink and one white. It won't bloom until next year probably.

So that's what mom has been up to. She brought in all these new plants for us to pee on!