Fall Landscaping Spruce-up

We had a change of plans for the weekend.  I was supposed to finish my curtains for the family room, but the weather was just so gorgeous that I needed to be outside.  So we decided to make some updates to our landscaping.

My friend from work is a hard-core gardener and she recently gave me a bunch of iris plants so we decided to make use of them in a new bed on the side of our house.  We also added two rose bushes to this bed.  It looks pretty empty now, but I want to wait until the irises bloom in the spring to see what, if anything, we need to add to it.

The bed is a bit of a mess... we still have some cleaning up to do, but we were both too tired.

With all of the digging we did, we found a lot of rocks, which we are using to keep our mulch in place along the bed at the front of our house.  We got the idea from Our Home From Scratch.  I know a lot of us new home owners have a ton of rocks in the yard, so if you have the ambition to go around and pick them up, this is a functional and pretty way to put them to use.

We also got some mums and pumpkins for the front stoop and moved our planters to either side of the garage.  Our potato vine in those planters went crazy this summer.

And last but not least, we planted our first tree!  (It's actually our second tree, but we're not going to mention what happened to the first one.  Let's just say we hope this one has a better fate than that one did!).

It's a cherry tree, and the spot we chose is a bit sentimental to me.  My parents' house growing up had a cherry tree next to the driveway and it always made me so happy pulling up to the house when the flowers were blooming in the spring. 

I'm hoping we can plant one or two more trees this fall.  It's so bare around here!

Oh, one more thing... if you don't have a burning bush, you should get one.  The nursery dude wasn't kidding when he said it turns bright red in the fall.  It looks so cool!  It's my favorite plant we have so far.

Anyone else doing any landscaping updates?  I need ideas so I'd love to see what other people are doing.