Last weekend (when my parents were here visiting) it rained. And rained and rained and rained... Since many of our plans involved being outside, I asked Mom and Dad what they wanted to do instead, and surprisingly, they wanted to help work on the house. They must not read the blog enough if they thought that sounded like fun :-P So on Saturday we discovered a cool new store (more on that later) and went to Lowes to start looking at plants for our backyard. Sunday we went back to Lowes to get some stuff for the house, installed a few new things on the front porch, and also started working on the hutch. We need to finish all of those projects, but it's supposed to be really nice this weekend and I'm excited to start working on the yard! Oh, and in case you were wondering, we also went out to eat a lot and did other fun things :-)

Currently, our back yard has no landscaping. We have a nice deck, a 1/2 dead giant tree, and some chain link fence. We want to put some flower beds in and do some landscaping by the deck and in front of the garage. We have a few plants ready to be planted, but first we need to decide what kind of landscaping we want. I thought I wanted squared-off raised beds in front of the deck and along the garage... and then I was thinking maybe more free-formed beds would be better... and now I can't decide.

What do you think? Should we follow the lines of the deck and make 2 rectangular beds? Or should we make them be more organic in shape? I think that in plan, I like the curvy beds, but when I look at the picture I'm seeing the rectangular beds...