sit still while on them. :) dare you to sit on one and not LOL

to plant every summer. SO - My nephew cut out shapes of shrubs out of plywood and I painted them. Here they are! It's a fairytale look, don't you think?

So my younger brother and a helper came and went to work on this. Had to move and replace the ingrown sprinklers, (got a visit from the city months later that someone turned me in for doing sprinklers without a permit but she agreed no problem if REPLACING old to new in same quantity) My other brother helped with the final work of placing the pipes.

So here is when we first dug up the yard...but there was family medical emergency keeping up from being able to finish for about 2 months so this wonderful crab grass kept taking root! even in 100 degree heat with zero water! Guess I should have watered that!

We bought Sod from a local company (not shipped in) cut up and put down in one day! Moved brick from 2 sides of the driveway to a single side to make a nice pathway to the door,

Then last pictures are of what it looks like now...still not complete...I have some more perenials to behind the newly planted Petunias...

worth anything and is it worth having it cut somewhere? Thanks for your help!

showing up). In the last few weeks, there are ant hills appearing daily. Many ant hills. What is the best way to get rid of them at this stage? Would a liquid spray work better than a granular bait? I am going to use a barrier treatment around the house, but feel I need to do something on the hills themselves. All the rain we are having isn't helping matters, either.

is under the trees and gets lots of leaves in it. The fountain leaks in back and the water keeps getting lower and lower, probably a hole in the liner somewhere.

So we are thinking of filling in the pond w/small red lava landscaping rock on bottom (lots of this in a garden we are redoing and I dislike it), then river rocks on top w/the fountain still bubbling up in the middle. Any suggestions on how to do this properly so that the water will not leak out, and we don't have to continue to refill the water level? Thanks for any ideas, I live in Wyoming so there is LOTS of snow in the winter and it is only used in the summer months.

Now we are also going to redo the front of the house w/a full length deck (eventually a roof over it). Have some cinder blocks, and thought about using wood decking over them w/the blocks as support. Do we need to place the blocks in sand to level? Or how should we proceed?

Red Pots: 27" Walmart

Lanterns: Misc stores (all were under $20 - Home Goods, Pier One, Garden Ridge)

You can learn more details about how I transformed the space from my blog.