Finally, Color!

One huge blessing that comes with living in the first floor apartment of our house is that we have the huge porch and close access to the landscaping now.  When we had renters down here, I always felt a bit weird working right in front of the porch, even though we do own the house and needed to work on the landscaping.  It is just much more comfortable now.

A few weeks ago we had finished the landscaping of the house for the summer...but it was not very colorful.  We had transplanted some Day Lilies, but with the high temperatures and no rain, they didn't make it.  Luckily with Luke working in the parks/landscaping business, he has a lot of connections where we can find cheap (or sometimes even free) plants.  So this past week we were able to add some more color to our landscaping on a very low budget. 

 I have really enjoyed getting my hands dirty and working outside this spring!

On the bottom left you can see part of my little herb garden which only contains Stevia and Cilantro right now.  I used popsicle sticks to label the plants.  

Our roses have really taken off!  I love that they're different colors.  

I'm so excited to keep our house looking nice on the outside this year.  I feel that part of my "calling" as a wife is to turn our house into a home, and I am so blessed that it has become so much easier and more convenient now that we live on the first floor!  Not only is it easier to work on the landscaping, but it is also smaller and more open on the inside, making it much easier to clean!  Honestly, we just had too much space on the top two floors before, and it was hard to keep up with the mess, even with just two of us!  Anyway, moving into the downstairs apartment has been a huge blessing, and I continue to love it!