Spring Some Knowledge On Us

(Hey guys, get ready for larger images on the blog because THAT'S WHAT'S HAPPENIN', HOT STUFF! We've made our pictures bigger so you can check out the images on our posts that much easier. Enjoy our 'in your face, interface'!)

I seem to be the only one of my friends and family that isn't a natural green thumb. I think I'll catch on after a while because I have a real yard and real landscaping to take care of, but I just don't have the ability to walk up to half of the plants in a garden center and identify them properly without looking for a tag.

With this being said, this post is going to be super interactive. I am asking you, the readers, to play a little game with me. It's called, "Identify My Yard". I am going to show you around our yard and I will put a letter next to each different plant. Please place any identifiers you can with the correct letter in the comments section. There aren't any prizes (except for some super bragging rights), but I would really appreciate the help. Ya know, from someone who wants a nice yard to a plethora of people with nice yards already.

To start, in the backyard, we have this horrible monstrosity of a flower bed against the house. Thankfully, we have a really pretty tree in it that is already well established. Here is the flower bed:

Here is Tree (A) as of last week:

And as of Easter Sunday:

Across the walkway from this bed is the flowerbed under a tree and next to our porch in the backyard. Originally it was shaped like this:

Which I thought was way too big. I brought the rock barrier in a little and made it a bit more of an organic line. Which looked like this:

And after 3 hours of clean up, looked like this:

But more importantly, what kind of tree is Tree (B)?

We have a third tree in the back (Tree C) that is beautiful. We have been using it as our bird station for the month, but we hope to move that over to the less used side of the house. Till then, it looks like this:

And has buds on it that look like this:

Thankfully the bottom is surrounded by a flower I AM sort of familiar with. Daffodils!

We have a large dirt pile in the back of the yard that also has a bunch of them. Apparently when you move dirt, the bulbs/roots will travel with it. It cracks us up every time we see it.

What really puzzles us are the small purple Flowers (D) that seem to be everywhere in the back lawn.

They are pretty small, but very cute.

The front yard is a whole different story. We can start with this odd Plant (E) beside the garage door.

It matches the rest of the front yard, which is a bit of a disaster (except for the entry garden):

A lot of the stuff growing here is hard to identify and I don't even know how I would go about labeling this. There is one Bush (E) that has pods like this, though.

And a cool Twisty Tree (F)

...accompanied by a large covering of this (which I believe to be creeping flox?)

But there are a more daffodils, so that helps:

And the entry garden next to the driveway is showing some color:

...but it is still the only garden I would consider "together".

Right up against the house, it gets worse and even more random. There are these weird Bushes (G)

And these weird Bushes (H)

Which we haven't really touched since moving in. I would like to replant the whole area, but for now, knowing is half the battle.

We spent a solid 5 hours of clean up a couple weekends ago. We raked the rest of the leaves that were left from the fall season and bagged a lot of old mulch and dead acorns that littered the backyard. When we were finished, our trash pile looked like this.

We are going to slowly work on our landscaping, but for now we would just be happy to know what everything is. Please leave your guesses and comments in the comments section. If not for us, please leave them for the Leela. She would like to know what she should lay on in the coming warming months.

#Thatface