This post is sponsored by the woods in our back yard. All opinions are 100% mine.
It’s true. The woods in our backyard decided to taunt me with free plants. And I am too cheap to say no. Especially since the backyard is lacking in the plant department. In fact, there were zero plants near the back deck. Hello Boring, meet Humdrum. He’s Ben Stein’s cousin. It must run in the family.
It all began with a trapse through the woods back in February. I was just chillin’ with two of my favorite people – Will and my camera. That’s when I discovered some random azalea bushes.
So as soon as it warmed up a bit, I dragged my shovel out there and dug them up.
Seven pounds of sweat later, I had the plants out of the ground and back into the ground in a different location…namely around the deck steps.
Of course, the rest of the area needs a bunch of help. I am thinking some hanging plants, some potted plants and maybe a cool concrete paint job on the lower patio.
Oh and we gotta pressure wash them stairs. It’s bad when you walk on wood and it’s slimey. It’s worse when slime doesn’t want to grow on your steps because they are too gross for their little slime-habitat to flourish.
The azaleas are a good start.
Oh and Jeremy – don’t get your hopes up that these plants are here to stay forever. Your wife has decided that she doesn’t need to make any permanent decisions. That decision is also not permanent. Just a forewarning.
Of course I had my little helper in tow. His hair is getting long. Still no real sideburns…but the peach fuzz has started. We threw a party in honor of it’s upcoming arrival.
Oh and since I found a tag on one of the azaleas (apparently the previous owners were rich enough to try to plant shrubs in the woods) I found out that they were of the Coral Bells variety. So I photoshopped a few into the yard to see what they would look like in oh, forty years. Just in time for my retirement party.
Of course, free plants do still cost a pretty penny. A very itchy penny. I had poison ivy ALL over. And just in case you are like me and had no clue what the evil plant looks like…here she blows.
So that is how we scored some zero-dollar shrubs for our backyard.
Have you been planting anything lately? Or maybe you are allergic to the poisons of that dreadful weed too? Or perhaps you just wanna share your favorite shrub? (I asked for shrub help last year when we were redoing our front yard and I LOVED the suggestions – even used the top ones in the makeover!)
I’m in a Benadryl stupor as I type…some Andorra Junipers I just planted made my forearms one, giant, swollen rash. Sexy. So, I can’t say that I’d recommend them. All the hydrangeas I’ve been planting are making me happy though…they’re just so darn purty (just don’t water the leaves directly or they get all weird).
BTW, thanks for the poison ivy pic…I guess I’d never thought to google a picture of it before. 🙂
Ooooh my husband gets HORRIBLE poison ivy…it will literally cover his arms, chest, legs…and then spread. You can guess that equals a cranky, itchy husband. Good luck with that! And hooray for free plants. We’ve been trying to re-use a lot of plants that we’ve torn up as we change the landscaping around our house.
My dad is super allergic to poison ivy, so bad that if he even looks at it then there is a hospital visit involved. Last year when my mom and I were clearing and cleaning up our new yard (we had just moved in) we discovered poison ivy on our back fence…my poor mom. I have never gotten it though, but don’t worry I make up for it though, because I have the sweetest blood and all bugs LOVE me!
We just planted our vegetable/berry garden and in addition dug up a bunch of old tree trunks throughout our yard. I’m thinking about going into the woods around here and digging up some ferns for the open space that is now available and probably two ferns to hang on the porch. You got to love the free stuff. Oh, and my neighbor is letting me go to her house to dig up some garlic too. That should be fun!
I love your blog, but it’s getting a wee bit sponsor-heavy at the moment.
Haha! This is hilarious!
xo- kb
Free azaleas! Lucky lady! Now that we’re finally in our first house with a yard instead of an apartment I just planted our first vegetable garden, plus some raspberry plants in one of our awkward-to-mow fence corners. Flowers and bushes may have to wait until next year. My stomach gets the deciding vote on all gardening decisions, and it has a one-track mind.
I have poison ivy from some Mothers Day backyard fun I wanted to have, of course the husband has none (but I’m totally not bitter). It is mkain’ me CRAZY!
Ummm, not really sure of the legal zoning of your woods – I can only speak to my personal experience. Which is, yes, builders stick plants in the greenbelt area (hence tags on the az). However, this may be part of a wilderness restoration project that was legally required as part of permitting. Especially if the area is zoned wetlands. The restrictions will vary, but HOAs, city, and state may have restrictions on what you can dig up. Kinda like picking meadow flowers in an state park (dont).
Bummer about the poison ivy, but I think the azaleas are worth it! They’ll add a lot of color to your backyard.
Nice Azaleas!! Naughty Poison Ivy! I hate that stuff, my hubby gets covered head to toe with it if he comes near it and it’s sooo difficult to kill!
Not sure if you meant to spell it like Curtesy in your title or not, but Courtesy would be the right spelling of that word. I may be missing a major play on words though, so don’t mind me if I am! 😀
Poison ivy?? Oh no!
Hope that is all cleared up Katie! And those plants are going to look awesome someday!
I LOVE ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING THAT IS FREE!
YEAH!
Lori
http://www.wom-mom.com
Oh KB, you’ll have to tell the woods to stop sponsoring your backyard beautification! 😉
I pulled something out of our front planter that gave me a slight rash and looked suspiciously like that Poison Ivy you showed. Does it grow as a vine? I feel like I should know these things.
Ooh, gotta love free plants. Ben Stein won’t want to stick around long now that you’ve added some interest, though. Which means, no winning his money. Boo. As for shrub suggestions, I love boxwoods. I’m in no way a gardener, but I can grow boxwoods.
My brother gets really bad poison ivy, and he found a product called Tecnu that has a product that you rinse off with after you have been exposed and it dramatically reduces the infection. You might give it a try!
I’m glad I read this! I was thinking about using boxwoods around our house but I was worried I’d kill them!
Leaves of three…let it be Katie! I’m sure you’ll never forget what it looks like now!! Try calamine lotion to help with the itchiness…and try to itch as it will go EVERYWHERE!
I don’t know about down in the south, but up here in the north, my favorites are Lilacs (currently in bloom EVERYWHERE and the smell is intoxicating) and hydrangeas. Actually planning on potting a few plants/herbs this weekend! Hopefully you’ll have great weather to do the same. Enjoy!
Honey, you’re so lucky to have a blank slate of a backyard… and free shrubs to choose from. We just chopped down 2 “Fire Trees” (I don’t know their real name) from our front yard. I’ve got A LOT of work to do. Here’s a before and after:
http://bontempsbeignet.blogspot.com/2011/05/fire-trees-are-gone-now-youre-eyes-can.html
smh
Oh, and you can usually identify poison ivy from the pointy glove shape. Good thing Will didn’t roll around in it!!
I love that you found shrubs in the woods and replanted them! They look great…bummer about the poison ivy though…hope you are healed up. Found your blog through Young House Love and I love it! I just bought my first place and ripped up all the old shrubs- I have grand dreams of planting a fabulous garden but its so overwhelming…I wish I knew where to begin!
Oooooh crap…THAT’S what poison ivy looks like??? 🙁 My husband touched it and later noticed what it was, but claims he’s immune. I nearly touched it, but he stopped me.
My friends helped us tame the craziness blocking our water view last year (the previous owner hadn’t done anything in the garden in the whole 7 years she owned the house) and one friend somehow got it on her face! I felt sooo bad, but I thought we’d killed it all! Apparently not (insert a YHL “wop wop” here)
Maybe you can grow some type of vine like jasmine going up the banister of those stairs to make it super romantic!
Awesome foraging skills! Sorry about the poison ivy, to avoid future exposure remember the wise words of Homer Simpson “leaves of three, leave them be, leaves of four…eat some more!” Haha
That’s a genius idea. Love how you’re thinkin’ with the free plants! You could potentially do the same with little tree saplings from the forest floor.
As I was reading your post, I was thinking “I hope there’s no poison ivy in her woods, maybe it doesn’t grow in her area.” Ooops! At least you got some pretty plants out of it! I used to get poison ivy every summer as a kid and would have to walk around with pink Caladryl all over my legs (before they made the Clear kind of course).
Boxwoods are a black thumb’s dream. We have some on the shady side of our house, and I literally have done NOTHING to them in the 7 years I’ve been in my home. Maybe that’s why they have survived–I tend to kill everything else. Hubby will trim them back every few years, but that really is it.
Hi Katie, Love your blog and check in quite regularly! Can’t wait to see what you do with your lower deck. We have a walk basement as well and are in the process of building a new upper deck and decided it would be nice to have one below too. Also, my son had no sideburns at all. He is 7 now and has a totally normal head of hair. So be patient….the burns will grow eventually!
My husband got poison ivy so bad he had to have a shot. I hope yours wasn’t that bad!
I planted a raised vegetable garden. I used the Square Foot Garden method. I’m so excited to see what comes up!
Free plants! Score! Guess that means the previous owners had money to burn! Wasn’t your house a foreclosure? 🙂
Free plants are awesome! Sorry to hear about the poison ivy. We have poison oak here in California. My husband is super allergic. If he comes close to the stuff, I essentially can’t touch him for at least a week.
curtesy |ˈkərtəsē|
noun ( pl. -sies) historical Law
a tenure by which a husband, after his wife’s death, held certain kinds of property that she had inherited.
Am I missing a joke?
We have a lot of ferns in our woods…I take those for new houseplants 🙂 Good luck with your freebies.
In the woods? These old owners are interesting. From the paint choices and now plants in the woods.
I’ve been all about dividing and transplanting my plants this year. I’m trying hard not to buy new plants every weekend. I third (or even fourth by now) agree with the above mentioned boxwoods. If you ever want to switch things from shrubs try hostas. We put them along the side of our house instead of shrubs.
Thanks for the picture of poison ivy! I have that stuff popping up here and there. I let my husband deal with it, with gloves on.
I used to be fine pulling up that stuff with my bare hands, but apparently each time you’re exposed, it gets worse.
No planting for us. Just weeding. We just moved too and the prior owner was into landscaping in a major way. I’ve spent the majority of the past few weekends trying to figure out what’s a weed and what’s a plant so I know what to pull. Never if my did I think that I’d have to become a gardener!
Sorry about your poison ivy! I’ve had it twice before and am highly allergic – had to take steroids to get it to go away. Hopefully yours isn’t that bad!!
The joke’s on the result of homeschooling….
Wow I would have never thought of that M! But I can assure you that out here in redneck country…we don’t have restoration projects…or restrictions. In fact, I truly believe these azaleas were planted on the former edge of the path that led from the backyard to the creek…and then the woods crept up and took over. But I do think that most people should check with their local ordances just in case!
xo – kb
Yes – according to my mom, Poison Ivy does grow as a vine.
xo – kb
Oh thanks for the recommendation! We’ve been using bleach water in a spray bottle…seems to do the trick too.
xo – kb
Hi there Katie…I met you on Sunday at church…love azaleas…those should look beautiful once they grow in…so stinky about the poison ivy! That Will is so stinkin cute sitting in the wagon!
OH KB, I have poison ivy too! It’s terrible. Mine is so bad I had to see a doc. I am like an alien trying to breath oxygen when it comes to my skin touching plants. Not a good reaction. And poison ivy, oh man, it’s so bad. Too funny that my fav blogger got into some as well. That eases my pain a titch 🙂
Cheese Whiz! I love your photos girl!
Hey Becky! So glad you checked in…and it was so nice to meet you! Jer & I were saying later that you are our hero – with those four little ones…whoa.
xo – kb
Azaleas are lovely, especially when free!
Poison ivy is pure evil. We have an abundance of it (we’re in SW VA) – it comes as a ground cover, a vine (I’ve seen over an inch in diameter) and even as a bush. I’m very allergic, but my husband is hyper allergic (Dr. visit and shots). So I wear rubber gloves, long sleeves, and long pants, and carefully pull it up 4 gallons at a time (I put it in 4 gallon buckets I get free from the Wal-Mart bakery, seal it up and take it to the dump). The ground cover is really vines growing under the ground, and popping up every couple of feet – I try to pull up the whole vine, coiling it as I go. I tried spraying an area, but it grew back the next year – pulling it up is the only way to get rid of it. It takes me 2-3 hours to pull up 4 gallons.
For the places on your skin that break out even after the Technu, the absolute best thing I’ve found is eucalyptus oil and lavender oil (essential oils from a health food type place) – one drop of each on every blister (morning and night) will reduce the itch to barely noticeable. It also goes away much more quickly – a week or so instead of 6 weeks. It definitely gets worse with each exposure, so please be careful!
I didn’t know what poison ivy looked either…till it was too late! I didn’t know it could climb up things….and turn colors in the fall! HA! Lesson learned…..I look now. Roundup has a Poison Ivy spray that works good. What a great find…free Azalas (sp) ~ woot~
Best poison ivy help/cure: Tecnu.
http://www.teclabsinc.com/store/poison-oak-ivy/tecnu-extreme
(my mom is extremely allergic and she swears by it)
Good luck!
Ouch! I am terrified of poison ivy.
Do you really mean curtsey? Or Courtesy?
Gardening is hard work and can be dangerous- Poison Ivy case in point! I kid you not- I had P.I. on my wedding day- not my idea of a blushing bride…
I am beyond paranoid about it- my husband is annoyed to tears by me going- don’t touch that plant, did you wash your hands….etc.
We just spent the rainy weekend out in our garden making a deer proof veggie garden..
See the post here
http://styleandcentsability.wordpress.com/
I was helping the hubby clean out the barn this past weekend. During a spring blizzard. Anyway, I’m now covered in poison ivy and it’s not even Easter yet.
And that is truly the benefit of redneck country living 🙂
WOW! Poison Ivy, yuk. I have never known what it really looked like. Thanks for the picture. I like free plants too. “If it free, it’s for me” Plants at the store are getting pretty expensive and I just don’t have a lot of luck. Planted Black Berries a couple of years ago and they just keep spreading and no berries. Not sure how to fix that.