Time to get started for the season. I tried to clean up a bit around the flowers by the driveway.

The mystery bulbs my friend gave me last fall turned out to be Daffodils.

I've got a good bit of debris in the yard. There is a large pine tree out of view on the right of the photo above that drops cones everywhere.

On this side of the yard, the Sweet Gum tree drops those little grenades all over the place.

This makes me happy ! I moved the Chinese Snowball last fall, after which it immediately dropped most of its leaves. I was hoping this was because of the time of the year, and not that I killed the plant by moving it. Seeing new growth for the spring is a good thing !

The Sweet Gum tree is just out of view to the left in the photo above. It leaves its mark in the form of those little grenades all over that side of the yard.

We're off to a good start so far.

The Bridal Wreath Spirea is waking up for the season.

I'm expecting big things from the azaleas. I left them alone last fall, which means they should bloom well this spring.

I bought a Korean Azalea at the UGA Horticulture Club plant sale last spring. It seemed to drop all of its leaves over the winter. But the flowers make me think it's doing ok.

Things look fine in the back yard by the patio. I'll have some weeding to do in this area. And I think something like pine bark nuggets would look good here.

The Blue Arrows Rush grass I planted here last fall seems to be doing ok. That grass likes part shade, which is why I put them in the back yard.

The three Japanese Boxwood shrubs I planted in 2012 seem to be the right size for where I have them planted, (center above next to the brick fence).

There used to be a Buckeye tree in the center of this area of the back yard. Through a series of events, it got moved toward the fence.

I relocated the Buckeye tree to an area near the fence.

When I first moved here, there was a decent sized dead tree in this area. It had been taken over completely by a combination of English Ivy, Poison Ivy, and all the other vines that inhabit my back yard. A few weeks ago, I finally cut the dead tree and all the vines down. The large vacant area seemed like a great place for the Buckeye Tree.

This is another sighting that makes me happy ! Like the Chinese Snowball earlier, I wondered how the Buckeye tree would react to being moved. Seeing this means all should be well.

My project for today was to add mulch to the plants in the front yard. Lowe's has red and black mulch. Mixing the two colors around the yard seems like something that could work.

I have read where mulch that is spread around trees and shrubs should be replaced yearly to reduce the risk of disease. I started first at the pear tree and moved the old mulch to other areas of the border and spread a bunch of new black mulch in its place.

The three Crape Myrtles next to the pear tree, (just out of view to the left in the photo above), got red mulch.

The photo above should give you an idea of what I'm aiming for - black, red, black, red, etc., with the homemade brown mulch acting as a border.

The palm tree got black mulch, followed by the Small Anise Tree in red, and the Japanese Maple in black.

I mentioned before that I wanted to move the Creeping Phlox plants I had surrounding the palm tree. They just didn't seem to be happy where they were. So I moved them to an area behind the rose bushes next to the driveway.

The palm tree got a fresh covering of black mulch.

And this is what I came up with. I'm happy with the color variation.

Going the other direction, the Yellow Flag Irises got surrounded by red mulch.

In keeping with the pattern, I used black mulch around the maple tree, followed by red mulch around the Yellow Flag Irises. Because I have a lot of black mulch surrounding the border plants, I decided to use red mulch around the dogwood and Star Magnolia.

And voilà !

I've got a bunch of work still to do. But I'm off to a good start.