Curb Appeal

I watch a lot of HGTV nowadays.  A mini marathon of Curb Appeal really motivated me.  Now that I have conquered mowing, I thought it was time to try my hand at adding a little color to my flower beds out front.  They started off pretty sad.

I plucked out a bunch of weeds and trimmed some of the dead leaves off my still unidentified plants.  I left the leaves on the floor of the bed by justifying that they were free mulch.  Since I don't really know what I have growing and the temperature has been in the 100s I decided to just start with a little color.  I have a tendency to kill most things I plant, or at least I did at my old condo.  No need to throw too much money down the drain right upfront.

The large oak tree in the front yard is to blame for the sparce looking St. Augustine.  No judgement.  Red vincas added a nice pick-me-up to the bed and past the mystery plants, down by the pruned rose bush, I planted hosta.  The rest of the yard (the mulched part of the yard) got begonias, succulents, impatiens, monkey grass and purslane.

Now let's place bets on how long it takes me to kill them.  I figure for the first couple of years this will be trial and error. 

And because I'm me...I've created a powerpoint to track what I planted and where.  This will help me from rebuying things I'll killed. 
While out planting I noticed that my front porch was really plain.  I haven't bought any seating for it because everything I liked was too much money to spend on something that's really just for looks.  It's not like I'm going to spend a lot of time sitting on the front porch.

As luck would have it, Garden Ridge was having a 50% off sale on patio furniture.  So 50% off their already low, low prices scored me a bench for $35!  You can't beat that!  I would have bought stuff for the backyard as well but I couldn't figure out how I could transport it all by myself.  I swung by World Market for a couple of cute outdoor pillows.  I love how it turned out.  If you're in the neighborhood, you'll have to swing by and try it out.