With less than two weeks of preschool to go, I’ve been working on our summer bucket list and trying to divide everything into categories:  Places to Go and things to do/eat/make at home.  I’m second working on the list of stuff to do at home, but here’s our list of local stuff to do in DC, VA & MD:

1.  Visit Clark Elioak Farm & Petting Zoo

2. Visit the Natural Bridge

3. Pick strawberries at Great Country Farms

4.  Visit the National Children’s Museum

5.  Cool off at the Water Mine.

6.  Watch the 4th of July Parade in Fairfax

7.  Ride the Water Taxi between the National Harbor & Old Town Alexandria

8.  See Elizabeth Mitchell in concert at Wolf Trap Theatre in the Woods

9.  Visit Our Special Harbor in Alexandria

10.  Hike Scott Run’s Nature Preserve in McLean

11.  Visit Frying Pan Park

12.  Go to Clemyjontri Park

13. Visit the National Arboretum

14. Go on a nature walk at Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens

15.  Go to the beach and see the wild ponies at Assateague Island

16.  Watch “5 Little Monkeys” performance at Adventure Theater

17.  Visit the Yards Park in DC.

18.  Play in the splash park at Fairfax Corner and get ice cream at Pinkberry.

19. Have a picnic at Chrysalis Vineyards in Middleburg.

20. Visit historic Richmond, VA.

21.  See an outdoor concert

With a 2.5 year old and a 1 year old, I seriously might have to buy myself this shirt…

That’s right!  Time is flying and we are expecting baby #3!

I’ve mentioned previously how we’ve been doing lots of landscaping and gardening.  In London, we had a small outdoor space and hired a gardener to design and plant the entire garden.  I’ll admit that I didn’t know what half the stuff was in the garden, but it was beautiful.

When we moved to our new house in Virginia, there was a minimal amount of landscaping, especially in the backyard.  We contacted a local landscape design company and talked about our vision for the entire yard, including hardscaping.   We had a lot more space in Virginia and therefore, the costs were a lot higher so high in fact, that I’m pretty sure I could’ve bought a BMW for the price.  Yowers!

Naturally, we sort of hemmed and hawed about what to do.  Break the yard up into parts and work on one section at a time?  Scale back our design?  Use less expensive materials for the hardscaping?  Do some of the work ourselves?

That last thought was kind of laughable at first, because although I know what I like, I really have no experience in the garden.  I started looking at the gardening plans on Better Homes & Gardens (this is a great site!) and I also watched a local show called Merrifield Garden Advisor.  I DVR this weekly so I can go back and remember what was discussed.  Anyway, I got a ton of ideas from both of the sources and I also started to collect ideas on Pinterest.

Here was my list of things I wanted when I started:

1.  Beds all the way around the fenced in backyard - more curved/wavy than straight

2.  Plants in Bloom from April to October

3.  Trees that bloom at different times of the year, plus some evergreen ones too.

4.  Mostly perennials, use annuals for mainly container gardening.

5.  Plan for texture and depth first and then color.  Too many different colors can be jarring so work with a color palette.

6.  Lots of green, but in terms of color more pinks, blues and purples than reds, yellows and oranges.

7.  Create a small rock bioswale

8.  Plus, I had a want list of certain types of plants including:  boxwoods, hollies, dogwoods, cherry trees, hydrangea, hostas, lily of the valley, peonies, helleborus, ferns, mums, iris, callicarpas and azaleas.

Here’s what we’ve planted so far:

Trees:

• 2 Dogwood trees (Cloud Nine) – these are the only ones we had professionally planted because they were already pretty big when we bought them.  White Flowering tree.
• 1 Yoshino Cherry Tree – this is the tree that made the DC Cherry Blossom Festival Famous.  White/Pink Flowering tree.
• 1 Muskogee Crape Myrtle.  Lavender flowers in late summer, turning to red in autumn.
• 6 Nellie Stevens Holly Trees.  Deep green all year round.  Red berries in winter.

I’ll tell you a little bit about why we made the selections we did.  Aside from the Nellie Stevens, all of the other trees are flowering trees.  The cherry tree blooms first in April (although this year it was March) quickly followed by and around the same time as the dogwoods and the crape myrtle blooms in late summer/early fall.  The Yoshino Cherry Tree, crape myrtle and nellie stevens are all fast growing trees so that was another really important because they were all less than 4 feet tall when we put them in.  Too tall = no good for diy gardener.

Plus, small trees are cheaper, which is another bonus for the diy gardener.  It’s like the difference between $75-100 vs $500 or more per tree, especially when you factor in installation.

There is one of the dogwoods in bloom in March.

Here is the other dogwood, no longer in bloom, from a few weeks ago.

Here is one last look at how this area looked earlier this spring.

Didn’t my husband do a good job with my curved/wavy beds?

3 Nellie Stevens in the back along the fence – These will be about 20-25 ft tall when mature.

2 Shasta Viburnums in front of them.  The Shasta Viburnums get really quite tall – somewhere around 10-12ft and they have gorgeous white flowers when they are in bloom.

Here is a more mature Shasta Viburnum.  It reminds me a really gorgeous dress.  I think they are quite sexy as far as viburnums go – ha!

Around the large tree is where I have most of my hostas and ferns.  I love hostas and tried to choose a nice mixture of varieties.

5 autumn ferns (Dryopteris erythrosora ‘Brillance’)

7 hostas including Hosta June, Halcyon, Regal Splendor, Sagae and Tom Schmid.

Also in the back on the left side of the tree are 3 iris cristatas.  These were the tiniest plants when I put them in and they’ve already grown and spread so much.  I can tell I’m going to have to do some transplanting in this area.  All of these are shade loving plants.

Ok, I’ll stop there for now.

Hanging basket with strawberries.  Positioned at just the right right for little hands to see and pick!

A little place for water play.  This is made from a 24″ water heater drip pan and fitted with a 1 1/4 inch rubber stopper.

Playhouse landscaping.

Pig and Sheep have also taken up residence near the sunflowers!

I’ve been slow to blog lately because we’ve been spending so much time outside.  We have a number of garden projects that we are working on right now including the regular landscaping, vegetable garden, annual window boxes and containers and the children’s garden area.  I’m dividing the garden into different posts because there is so much to say.  First let’s start with the children’s garden.

Project 1:  Chalkboard

I started working on these chalkboards when the weather started to warm up in March.  The wood for the chalkboard is from some scraps from crates leftover from our move from London.  I used black latex paint because chalkboard paint isn’t recommended for outdoor use.  We made two boards but ended up only hanging one on the fence because we ran out of room in our children’s garden area.

Here’s the next phase:  Hanging it on the fence.  We also adding a couple of cheap stepping stones from Home Depot underneath.  We eventually made them level with the dirt/mulch so they were not a tripping hazzard.

Can’t you see what an incredible artist my Ava is??!  In this area, I also inverted a whiskey barrel and painted the top with the same black latex paint to make another chalkboard surface + a little table with the small tree stumps for seats around it.  I’d like to find tree stumps that are a little bit taller so that I can sit comfortably too!

Project 2:  Playhouse

We picked up a used playhouse that was in need of a makeover and Paul took on the challenge of spray painting it.  I got the inspiration for this from my cousin’s wife who did a remodel just like this for their little girl.

Bella got confused and thought this was her new dog house.

Here is Ava checking it out.

Nearly finished…

Project 3:  Sunflower House

My inspiration for this project came from the picture below.

It’s like a cool little fort.

Starting in early March, we planted about 20 Russian Mammoth Sunflower Seeds in little pots and started to grow them indoors.  Over the weekend, we transferred them outside.

We laid out a 4 X 6 foot plot and planted our 20 sunflowers.

We left on opening in the middle so you can get in the fort and put a little picket fence around them to give them a little extra protection while they are growing.  When they get to be about 6ft tall, we’ll string twine on the sunflowers across the grid so they will form a roof on the sunflower house.

One last look at the before and after…

Before:

And After:

Not too bad for a few weekends of work.  I’ll show you more of the trees and plants on the left in the next post.

Lately, this girl loves pirate ships and accessories!

Taking time out for a little bit of plane spotting.

Oliver is working on some new teeth and walking all over the place.

He loves Ava’s baby stroller too, but rather than dolls, he prefers to fill it up with blocks and other “stuff” he finds on his travels.

It’s hard to believe that he will be 1 year old next week!

Egg coloring fun

Waiting for the vinegar + coloring tablet to dissolve

Adding the water

First look at the Easter baskets

Backyard Easter Egg Hunt

Oliver didn’t want to play.  He was more interested in the lawn mower.

We haven’t done much blogging, but we’ve been busy with plenty of other things.

An early spring has meant that we’ve enjoyed lots of dinners outside.  Can you believe this boy?  He got his first pair of shoes this week and today he walked from our house to the end of the block pushing his toy cart.  It’s hard to believe he will be a toddler next month.

Ava speaking to the locals and using her coat to show solidarity with her feathered friends.

Here is how you will find Oliver most of the time — with one sock.  We never found the other one.  Fortunately, he hasn’t figured out how to take off his new shoes yet.

In preparation for Easter, Ava’s been taking care of a very special batch of chicks.

As it turns out, they really love juice!

Her donkey really loves juice too!

Ava and I did our own little take on a fairy garden.  Ours is a bird garden.

Ladybugs really like to visit our garden too.

We’ve also been doing a lot of landscaping.  In some delirious state, we decided it would be fun to do it ourselves.  Landscaping is really hard work though.  I think we may need to call in reinforcements.

See how much work there is to do!  But do you see my fun outdoor chalkboards in the corner? I hope to hang them on the fence this weekend.

Here is my little girl on her first Easter Egg Hunt last year.  Look how little she is.  I can’t wait to watch her and Oliver in action this weekend.

Winter never really came to Virginia this year, but we are definitely starting to see the first signs of spring.  I love seeing the daffodils and English daisies.

We are busy with a lot of household projects such as:

1.  Adding beadboard to the mudroom, low child friendly hooks and painting the wall a new color.

2.  Planning the landscaping in the backyard.  This is a really fun project that I’m attempting to take on myself even though my knowledge of plants and trees is limited.  So far, I love so many different things and want one of everything, but just like not having a million different paint colors in your house, you are also supposed to limit the number of plants to about 12-15 different kinds in your whole yard.  I’m trying to make sure that the ones I choose I love.

I started with the trees and it’s already been a really hard decision.  I love the Cherry Bloosom Trees that DC is famous for so I put one of those outside my dining room window.  I also love crepe myryle trees and the white dogwood trees, but I’d also love a Southern Magnolia and maybe some fruit trees but everything in my research tells me that is too many different varieties and for the about of space we have, I really need to limit it to about three different kinds.

3. I really want to go to the Flower Show in Philadelphia and it is supposed to be really nice on Thursday as in almost 70 degrees nice.  Plus, we have nothing planned, absolutely nothing on the calendar.  First time in forever.  Am I crazy for thinking I can drive my 2 year old and 9 month old 150 miles one way to Philadelphia?  Might turn into a complete debacle as Oliver is ususally pretty good at screaming for long periods of time in the car.  Call me crazy, but I just might do it.

4. We are also working out what to put in the vegetable garden.  We have some successes last year and other things turned out not to be so great.  I’m definitely experimenting with different types of lettuce this year and moving the herbs to a different location.

That’s all for now!