Getting our hands dirty

This past weekend we tackled the backyard.  Brian worked really hard to remove most of the weeds from the flower beds and I mowed down the weeds around the garden.  So things went from this:

 

To this:

We can actually see the bricks around the flower bed!  

Now we need to get busy planting flowers!

Our garden is starting to look exciting.  The strawberries are flowering and beginning to fruit:

While trimming the artichokes plants back I noticed we had actual artichokes!  (There's two in this picture, if you look close you can see one tucked away on the bottom right).

And the apricots are growing!

 

We do have some flowers growing around the yard.  There are a few late blooming daffodils:

The bearded iris are about ready to pop:

 

And I love the fan-shaped leaves of our ginkgo tree!

I even was able to pick flowers to fill some vases on our kitchen windowsill :o)

So that's the yard progress from the weekend.  Now we just have to start filling in the empty spaces and wait for things to grow!