Gardening

Hello!!! How are you? :-)
I hope you are doing fine. I have been away from the blog but for several and good reasons.May was a month full of interesting activities in Almere and the Sun, especially in the second half of the month, was absolutely gorgeous. So we have been enjoying this gift from the Heaven, and I'm glad we did it because this week is raining a lot again. We also took advantage of the nice weather to work on the front garden. Let's see what we have done so far? :-)

Do you like this flowerbed?
We bought these daisies and decorations in the Pentecost's weekend at the Luilakmarkt  in Almere and the new soil at Ranzijn store. This flowerbed is now more colourful, simple and easy to manage. Bye-bye arm pains because of the ivy pruning. I still need to paint this part of the fence, but that's all. The hardest part of this job was removing the ivy and the tree that were previously here.

From Sábado Pentecostes 2012 & BBQ

We also replaced  the lamp of the frontyard. We bought this one in Gamma  with a very nice discount.;-) Very Dutch procedure! ;-)

From Jardim

From the biggest flowerbed, I removed the two buxus and planted instead some red flowers.

From Jardim

We decided to keep the maple (acer) and the pine tree but remove the small bushes in between, so we could make the flowerbed with the pink stones that we had bought at Kippersluis.

From Jardim

From the other corner we removed the tree in the flowerbed and planted these camellias instead. Aren't they lovely? :-)

From Jardim

As you can see in the photo below, we still need to clean the brick pavers.Our neighbours will lend us the proper machine to do it.
This tree was already in the frontyard when we came to live here, but in the front flowerbed among several bushes that we removed last year, as you may remember, so we could plant hortensias instead.

From Jardim

Here we also planted hortensias.The little grey pebbles you see avoid the weed to appear as often, and that means less work in the future and no more pains in the back.

From Jardim

I've also bought more kabouters, this time in Xenos, to decorate the biggest flowerbed. Aren't they funny? 

" I didn't see, I didn't hear, I didn't say anything.". In fact, I appreciate discrete people. ;-)
In the evening, these kabouters spread some light because they recharge during the day through the sunlight. Very ecological, don't you think?. ;-)

From Jardim

This kabouter is nice for the birds. Here they can drink rain water.

From Jardim

So, tell me, what do you think about our renewed front garden?
I should have taken some pictures to show you how it was before, so you could see the differences:

the fence was grey and now is brown;
there were a lot of bushes and a tree in the front flowerbed and now there are hortensias;
we have now small grey pebbles covering the soil, pink stones surrounding the flowerbeds and kabouters decorating;
in the corner flowerbeds, we had trees and walls covered with ivy and now we have daisies and camellias;

I used to have a lot of work to keep the front garden clean and tidy: a lot of leaves to sweep, a lot of ivy to prune and a lot of weed to remove every two weeks. This kind of work is no longer necessary.

From Jardim

I hope now we will enjoy more the garden. Let's see if we find a pretty set of two chairs and a small table with a nice discount.
;-)

From Jardim

By the way, are you spotting the Dutch flags in the picture? The European Football Championship is starting. Good luck Portugal! Good luck Holland! :-) More for Portugal, of course! ;-))