I think I'm going to die.

We had an absolutely gorgeous weekend here in New England. Record highs, it was amazing. It felt like summer, and it's gonna suck when it gets cold again!

We were very busy though - finished the painting, and finally cleaned up and planted in the front yard! It looks like a whole new house.

Here is the before (back before we owned it) with shutters:

After we took the shutters off to paint, but you can see what the yard was like before:

The other angle:

And now the after!

And the other angle:

Finally, the crown jewel, our love fern!!

Aka, our prized Japanese Maple. We have been dying to get one of these for a while now. I told Jarrett that by the time our kids are going off to school, it will be big enough to take pictures in front of!

So about the whole dying thing:

Raked out the whole area to clean it up before planting.

Carried the leaves/sticks across the street to the woods behind our neighbor's house (she knew :-P).

All of those rocks around the mulch area? Moved and arranged them all. Bending over.

Dug all the holes and planted all of the shrubs, the prerennials, and the tree.

Spread all of the mulch, on hands and knees.

Tomorrow, my body may very well call it quits. Wish me luck getting out of bed!

(P.S. - J did work as well, I realize it sounds like he didn't. We carried the leaves together, and he tore out the old rock wall/flower bed thing, and roto-tilled the dirt area, and spread all sorts of stuff, including grass seed. He may die as well.)