Project "Curb Appeal" - Phase One, Jon's Garden

Know that I'm slightly (okay, a lot) embarrassed to show the 1st 3 pictures. I had to take "before" pictures of the previous state of our front yard so you could appreciate how nice it looks now.
Jon removed almost all of the overgrown bushes that had taken over our flower beds.... 3 months ago. We put down leaf compost with plans to soon put in flowers and pine straw. Soon turned into never. The veggie garden is more interesting to me. It provides food for our family. The front yard... just sits there. LOL Here it is... in all it's horrible glory... The grass needs cut, the weeds need pulled from the beds....

So, finally fed up with the embarrassing state of our yard, I made a deal with Jon... If you pull weeds, I'll clean the house :)
He pulled the weeds from the flower beds and then we headed to Lowe's for flowers and pinestraw.


The Hosta is the only plant I had in the flowerbed (other then the one bush we kept)
Down went the pinestraw....

Jon wanted to be the one to pick out the flowers. I showed him all of the perennials (don't want to have to go through the trouble of planting again next year... LOL)
I have to say, he did a great job picking out a vibrant, southwest-feeling pallet.... Black Eyed Susan, Coreopsis, Arizona Sun Blanket, and Gazania.
Another plus is that all of the plants are supposed to be heat and drought tolerant... bonus!
Charlotte helped back fill...

See Evan peeking around the post? I had to crop this pic since my panties were showing. LOL
I was lucky enough to discover that there were 3-4 Gazanias in each pot. They got planted between the larger plants.
So, Since Jon did most of the work and enjoyed picking out the plants, we're calling this... "Jon's Garden." He's been watering it daily and it's doing well :)


The flowerbeds coupled with trimmed grass.... big improvement, right?
Now, Phase 2 to come soon.... stay tuned!