It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

We actually did this before the whole shower leak thing, but I've been a little behind in clearing pictures off my camera.  It's surprisingly difficult to buy plants.  We went to the nursery a couple weeks ago to find some evergreens to plant in front of our house.  We used to have these gigantic bushy things that collapsed under three feet of snow during Snowmageddon a couple years ago.  We removed those and built a very nice brick retaining wall but didn't have anything to retain.  :)

My husband wanted evergreens and I wanted something triangular that would grow about four feet.  We saw some really nice dwarf spruces, but they apparently don't do well unless they have access to full sun, which we don't have in our front yard because of our big maple tree.  We were getting pretty conflicting messages from the nursery people, so we came home to do some research.  (One of the reasons we should invest in a SmartPhone, I guess.) 

Anyway, long story short, there aren't very many trees that fulfill the requirements of our space, but luckily, the holly bush is one of them!  So I sang Christmas songs in my head the whole time we planted them.  "Have a holly jolly Christmas..."  "The holly and the ivy..."  (We hate ivy, though.) 


Since holly berries won't come out until winter, we spruced up the area with a couple flower things I liked from Home Depot.  No idea what they're called, but they're colorful!