fresh start!

hello, new blog!

i really feel as though i should have something spectacular and inspiring or earth shattering to say to break in the new site, but really, i've got nothing. on to business as usual, i suppose. our landscape plan came in the mail last night! i meant to bring it to work today to scan, but in my usual rush to get out the door in time to get to work three minutes late, i forgot it on the kitchen table. tomorrow, i promise. i still like the landscape plan, and i also like that i feel free to swap out plants as my aesthetic tastes and pocketbook desire - for instance, he suggested a globe blue spruce shrub where we had taken out the ginormo pine tree in front of our house, to compliment the blue spruce tree we have growing on the other side of the driveway. i get it, but i'm not sold, so last night i was looking at things like dwarf boxwoods online.

along with the landscape plan, though, came a price sheet for the plants he recommended ... $3800. just for the plants and trees! labor for them to plant the plants is another $2400. that doesn't include removing the current plants and rocks, or laying a new weed barrier or edging or buying/laying mulch or anything like that. a) he recommended a heck of a lot of plants, and b) i think their prices are a smidge inflated. we stopped at home depot last night, and as i was looking around to get an idea for prices (this was before the nursery's price list came), and i saw an autumn blaze maple, which was a tree he'd recommended for the front yard. home depot's price was $60 - the nursery's price was $450. granted, the nursery gives you a one year warranty with the purchase of their plants (two if you pay them to plant them), and maybe there's a size difference in what you're buying ... but by my calculation, i could buy seven home depot maples for the price of one nursery maple. i'm just saying. so i think we'll be shopping around for the plants we decide to go with for now.