The Pinke Post

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Landscaping On The Prairie

Filed Under: America's Farm Table, Life in North Dakota Tagged With: , , , , 5 Comments

Three years ago, we moved to the prairie, to Nathan’s hometown.
In October 2007, we broke ground on our hay field to build our home. In June 2008, we moved into our home, unfinished but livable. It has been in a work in progress that a majority of the work completed has been done by my 80 hour week working husband and his father in their “spare time”. We also managed to have a couple kids during this time.
Thankfully for everyone involved we had a landscaping crew drive 80 miles to come help us out with some landscaping around the house.
Low maintenance, hardy, wind and cold tolerant plants are required. Our landscaper has 40 years experience and knew what to do. I simply requested variety, prairie like flowers and plenty of color. He gave me a listing of everything he recommended and a hand detailed drawing. We signed off and away they went working.
The crew worked in mud after some much needed rain. 
Today we have trees that are watered daily. I took these pictures this morning. 
The plants are coming around and growing. We didn’t go with the fancy rock from the landscaper and just had our local cement plant haul in rock, saving us plenty of money. I am not a lover of rocks in landscaping but mulch would blow away in five minutes at our house.
Nathan and I love this tree. It is a Japanese lilac and will have white blooms outside our kitchen window.
The guys landscaped around our unattractive septic system. The bushes and flowers will grow up nicely to block the view. The trees behind the septic area are Aspens and Ponderosa Pines that will grow up to be a shaded “camping area”. 
We had left over blocks from our retaining walls and the landscaping crew used those in the front of the house, another money saver. 
Nathan has extended our cement pad from the basement and is now going to stain the concrete. The circle will be cut out and our fire pit will be placed there. 
My flowers were transplanted and reused for the most part, minus my spring bulbs and annuals. 
The vegetables were partially saved and I now have a garden of tomato and pepper plants trying to survive their transplant. They are coming around and have fruit on them. 
This birch tree is just off the porch and directly outside my office window. Do you notice that old building that has been hauled in behind the tree? That will be a story for another day. I like old things. Nathan likes new things. We have a new house and an old building. It was moved over from our lumberyard and is original to the lumberyard. Once the “cement shed”, it will now be our garden shed with new siding on it but the original door will stay. We are adding some windows and a cupola for character. Our prairie landscaping is coming together. 
In two weeks, the landscaping crew is returning to seed grass.
What do you think of our prairie landscaping? Considering we started with a hay field, we are quite pleased. Now I am off to water the trees and garden, grocery shop, complete what seems like endless laundry and get ourselves best organized for our baseball team visitors that arrive tomorrow evening.

Unrelated to landscaping, here are a couple pictures for my mom, grandma, sister-in-law, sister and our son and big brother Hunter who will be home in two sleeps to see of the girls last night playing. You other blog stalkers who never comment but also check the blog to see the girls might enjoy a peek also.

Shaggy haired, Miss E has a hair cut today. She is most into caring for and protecting her babies.

Anika is in full tears on this picture as E explains all the reasons why her sister cannot play with her babies. They were sleeping. Anika was waking them.

Thankfully Anika moves right on to the next thing as she knows how to write at age one.
Okay, maybe not write, just she likes to eat crayons and chalk. We will work on letters another day.
Sweet girls but they keep us on our toes!

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Kirsti says

    LOVE love love the landscaping!! Can’t wait to see it. Also love the photo of Elissa keeping Anika away from the babies. It reminds me of us. 🙂 Only I eventually did get to your barbies and was able to give them their “makeovers.”

    Reply

  2. Anonymous says

    Ok Katie!!! Nice pictures and landscaping!! And good job of pointing the finger at me being one of the guilty ones who never signs in. I am no more busy than anyone else,so no excuses!! Ha!!! I realized after I thought about it this morning that the few blogs I follow who aren’t family or illnesses for whom I pray, it is young moms with Little Ones. That must be how I get my Little Ones fix with our 3 being Big Ones now!! So thanks for letting me enjoy your Gifts from God!!!!! Enjoy the BB tourney and guys you have in your home!!! Dorine

    Reply

  3. Ott, A. says

    your landscaping looks sooo great! We landscaped the front of our house this spring so I know first hand how much work it is to do. Hope to landscape the back next year.

    Reply

  4. Katie B says

    love it! I just love your red modern farm house. I hope to come and visit it (and you) one day…are there any cheap flights to ND these days???

    Reply

  5. Anonymous says

    Love the post and the landscaping photos!! Looks fabulous. Need to come out and see you sometime!!

    Love- R

    Reply

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