The yardwork never ends!

So besides triathlon training, I've been work in the yard plenty too. All those Saturday's while Jon was off playing firefighter, I was sitting in the yard. And not always with a beer in my hand!
Most of my time is spent picking the leaves out of the lava rock.... oh what a joyous task. I seriously would rather scrub a bathroom than do this! Here's where I'm at... you can see on the left where the lava rock is a lovely leaf color, and on the right where it looks black, like lava rock! Underneath the tree is the worst spot of course!

Our first real "landscaping" were these barberry bushes we planted. They survived the winter and are growing again! I managed to not kill them! They are planted in the lava rock, and yes I'm not good enough to get ALL of the leaves out!

I planted some Dahlias a couple of weeks ago, and they are starting to come up as well! So guess I haven't killed those yet. Hopefully we'll get some pretty flowers out of these!

And finally, after visiting Indiana and seeing lots of Hostas, I decided to try some in our yard. I heard they are pretty easy to maintain and hardy as well. For now they are tiny baby hostas.... hopefully they become grownup hostas one day!Hope so, cause I can be pretty good at killing plants. Just wish that talent also worked on dandelions! I planted 3 hostas total in front of the house, if you look VERY closely you can see 2 of them. (yes the grass here is a little shaggy.... but cutting the grass isn't my department!)