Blue Water and Latest Yard Project

I was trying not to show the pool again but I just love the way the urn with yellow mums looks there against the blue water that I just had to share it with you.

Blue Monday is hosted by Sally of http://smilingsally.blogspot.com/. Please visit her and then see all her participants' entries too. I promise you won't be disappointed.Blue and yellow just look so pretty together.
Now, it's time for Met Monday, which is hosted by Susan of http://betweennapsontheporch.blogspot.com/. Go to her blog and see lots of amazing transformations.
I want to show you how my latest project in our yard is going. It's not all done yet but it's getting there and it is looking a lot better, I think. My granddaughter calls this our secret garden because you cannot see it unless you go all the way to the end of the yard and look down.

This is how it was after the pool was built. See all the shrubs and all that mess under the trees?
We added these railroad ties even before we decided to build a pool and I have started working on it but when they dug out the dirt for the pool, most of the dirt and some cement fell here and buried a lot of my plants and killed them.
We hired a gardener to help me clean and trim the shrubs. I have never stepped in there before it was cleaned up because I am terrified of snakes and we have them around. Do you see how much more yard we have now?
We laid some bricks on the ground and put an iron swing there and a bench seat. Then I added this tall table and stools. The stools came with outdoor cushions but I did not put them on cause I am not done working here. I want to add some brick flooring under the table set too.
This is pretty much how it looks now. It's livable and I can actually go down there and sit on the swing without being nervous about snakes.

I had put some mulch in the beginning but everytime I water the plants (I water from above), the mulch just all get washed down so I decided to lay red rocks. It blends well with the brick of the house too. I think it looks good, what do you think? Just for the top part, we used up 14 bags so we still have a long way to go.

I had the gardener plant some hosta and bananas under the big oak trees. We still need to add mulch around and probably more plants.

This very heavy stone bunny was dug out from behind the bushes. We moved it here. I think

the smaller grandkids will enjoy rocking it. I think I will just add mulch underneath instead of planting grass because it will be hard to bring a mower down there.

I planted a calamondin citrus tree near the bunny.

Hope you enjoyed seeing the yard progress.

One more thing, can anybody tell me what type of snake this is and if it is venomous? The gardener just killed it. It was on the flower beds. Ugh!

Thanks, Sally and Susan for another fun week!

And thank you all for visiting and commenting!