Landscaping

My wife and I spent some cash buying soil, bricks, plants, bushes, weed guard, mulch and flowers to do some landscaping for the house. We finished the first part of our project which is a small are with lilys, silver wormwood (I think), and pansies surrounded with a circular red brick, and covered with a lighter wood-chip mulch. That took us quite a while to finish, but we did get it done.

The last thing that I need to do is finish digging the holes for the two honeysuckle bushes next to the porch. The land around our house sucks! we have about 4-5 inches of soil and then shale or sandstone. I am trying to follow the rule of thumb that I was told for the hole which is 2 1/2 times as wide and 3 times as deep as the plant's pot is wide. =( This makes for a very large and deep hole. I am almost done digging the first hole. It is not as deep as this rule of thumb would indicate but it is close. I will spend one more day on digging the first hole and then I will plant the sucker and then on to the next one. Ugghhhh!!

I will be glad when this is all done. We just have to make sure that we are able to keep the plants watered or they will die. Not a good thing especially with all of the money and time that we have invest in it. If you have any suggestions for first time landscaper/home owner for this sort of a thing, please let me know.

One thing to mention about all of this is that we have had fun trying to decide on the process. We are quite different in our approaches. I being a geek and not minding measure and following directions have rules of thumb that I want to follow and they seem to make some sense to me especially for the crappy soil that we have.

Tanya on the other hand, having done a lot of similar stuff with her family's Dacha (Like a vacation/country house that is often times used to grow plants for eating), at least in my perception, wants to just dig a whole and whip them in the ground, which quite contrary to my sensibilities. We have spent enough money on this process that I am willing to spend some extra time to measure distances between plants, follow rules of thumb, and take some extra time to potentially safe-guard our investment. So, this has been an interesting process. I will admit, that of the two of us, she is the only person to have any experience with sort of stuff, and I am sure that she has done a lot of it. I guess I am just a little leery and over cautious because I have no experience and there is quite a lot of money invested! =)

Have I told you that I love my wife? I do! She rocks!