Hosta Planting

There's no question that this summer has been a rainy one, but over the last few weeks, the weather has been nice enough that we've been able to get some work done outside (and enjoy a few summer nights outside). That includes planting some more hostas on the west side of the house. The hostas we planted last summer seem to do well here, since there is a ton of shade from the tree on this side of the house, and they are shade lovers.

We picked up three new small ones from Lowe's when we were getting materials for the basement (the current house project we've started working on this month). The two small ones in the below picture are new - the larger one on the right we planted last summer. (The large plant on the left side is the Bleeding hearts bush that blooms pink flowers in the spring).

The other new one we planted in between two of the larger ones on the other side of the basement door:

Below is a new hosta, a one-year old one, and in the upper right hand corner is my hydrangea we planted at the end of last summer. It actually came back this year after the harsh winter we had. Although there are no flowers on it yet and it's still pretty tiny. I recently gave it some plant food, and we've been getting tons of rain, which has really helped I think. I'm hoping it will bloom again someday!

Trent has started working on the basement - building a new door beneath the faux outside door we have, that you can see in the below picture. The door on the outside is actually a piece of a garage door. (We hope to update that someday). Under that is a tarp, then there are a few cement stairs, and a doorway which used to have an old wooden door that was falling apart and rotting. Trent ripped that out and is building a new doorway for our new steel door to fit in. Will share pics once it's done! Getting the basement ready is the next step in raising the living room and kitchen to where they are level, but it's a long process. After the door is done, Trent will clean up the dirt floor, mortar some of the brick wall, put down a gravel foundation on the floor, then pour concrete. We will then have a base for the new jacks to raise the living room the rest of the way. Sounds like fun, huh?

In other news, here's a pretty sunset we witnessed while driving down the road recently:

Google automatically made my photo all cool and stuff with Auto Awesome. I thought it looked pretty awesome myself.

We've enjoyed a couple small fires out back after Trent painted the firepit:

And he's currently working on painting the old grill, too:

Just needs one more coat or so, but it's looking good! Another small before and after to share when it's all done. Oh, and the bedroom shelf is pretty much finished! Super excited to share this one. Trent has worked hard on it off and on since April. He finally found time to finish it this week, and it's all moved into the bedroom. He just needs to finish filling it with clothes!

Have a great weekend, everyone!