@littlemissk, I like that instant shade solution. @ashleyoden if you use something with that style, you might want to change out your light pole to something a little more contemporary so it'll match. There are a lot of good suggestions here. I'm not that familiar with which plants work best in Alabama but I think trees give the biggest bang for the buck. Now that the project is bare dirt, it's better to do the most major additions now before you restore with sod. Move in all the bigger landscape trees and stuff you can and while you have the company or labor lined up to install the sod. Just have them prep the beds and use mulch where you eventually want to do smaller planting that you can install yourself if you want. If there are any other structures, future electrical for more lights or an eventual outdoor kitchen or irrigation, put in those services and sleeves underneath walkways. Have you thought about in a high traffic area of putting some synthetic turf and tying it into a putting green? Look at the great ideas on the site and think about what you’re going to be looking at the most when you’re in the house. Then create an outdoor room that looks great while you’re looking out from the windows as well as serves your needs poolside. Your outdoor room should have many elements an indoor room has. The ceiling is defined by the shade structure (or tree canopy), the walls by the fence or plants. You’ll also have your furniture, fire pit and lighting, a carpet of sod. Framed and enhanced by nice plantings and colorful pots as your accessories and it will draw you outside to enjoy. You're camera will help you. I don't think these angles best show the area where you'll want to concentrate. I also like to plan to have a nice large area for a tent or bounce house for bigger family events, so a 30 x 30' space is a good size to start with and keep large trees with spreading branching even farther away they don't encroach. Think about keeping it low maintenance, nice shaped beds that are easy to mow and trim with nice radiuses, easy to access with a piece of equipment if you need a repair. Luckily it looks like you have a nice sized yard to accommodate. Good luck

Tips: * Never let your plants sit in the effluent that collects in cache pots or collection saucers after you water. There should be no pathway by which the effluent can make it's way back into the pot. Raise your pots well above the maximum ht of the effluent. The reason we water copiously is so we can flush accumulating salts from the soil. * If you know your soil is overly water-retentive and your pot is small enough to handle easily. Water to the point of saturation and allow the soil to drain. When it's no longer draining, hold the pot over the sink and move it down, then sharply upward. At the change in direction from downward to upward, the excess water in the pot will adhere to Newton's First Law of Motion and continue downward and out the drain hole. You can remove ALL excess water from water-retentive soils with this wick. * You can also rid larger pots of excess water by simply tipping them after you water. The shaded area in the images below represents excess water that robs the roots of air. Compare B to A to see what happens when you tip a pot at a 45* angle. C shows how a pot's shape can affect how much excess water a soil can hold. D illustrates one way of using ballast to limit excess water retention. E, often used in concert with B, shows how to use a wick to rid pots of excess water. How to set up a wick with a rayon mop strand : * Fertilizers do not need to be confusing. Most plants use about 6X as much N as P, and about 3/5 as much K as N. After calculations are done for how P and K are reported on the package, fertilizers with 3:1:2 ratios provide nutrients in almost exactly the ratio at which the average plant uses them. There significant advantages in employment of this strategy. A fertilizer's RATIO is different than its NPK %S. Common 3:1:2 ratio fertilizers are 24-8-16, 12-4-8, and 9-3-6. Dyna-Gro's Foliage-Pro 9-3-6 has ALL nutrients essential to normal growth in a 3:1:2 ratio. It does not derive it's from urea, which results in a finer and more compact plant. I grow more than 100 species of plants in pots and I use it for all of them with superlative results. * Water gauges don't measure moisture levels, they measure electrical conductivity. Clean your probe and dip it in a cup of distilled water and note that it reads DRY. Add some soluble fertilizer or table salt to the water, and suddenly it's wet. Better than fingers or gauges/meters are wooden "tells" made from a 75 cent, 1/4 or 5/16" X 48" (long) dowel rod (any hardware or home improvement outlet). Cut it in half and sharpen all 4 ends in a pencil sharpener. Stick it deep into your pots (it won't damage roots). If it comes out wet or stained dark, it's usually best to withhold water. If it comes out dry, or nearly so - time to water. Fun stuff: My pals: Japanese maple in the mother-daughter style: What trees look like at the very beginning of their journey toward becoming an evocative bonsai: Baby bonsai: Baby cactus: Drunk on fermented berries: Ricinus (castor bean). 14' tall, leaves 4' across Thanks for lookin' Al

Thanks the sofa on that side definitely look nice. Be it that I would try and have the chaise side near the window. The blue rug is too flashy though, sorry. I wouldnt really use any blue accents with the grey and green in there already. Seems a bit flashy. I think orange above the window as an acent color could be nice too. And for the curtains, like I said, I'm thinking cpl white ones against the windows which close top down. Could you do me a favor and add in the accent color into one of the pictures which show the complete sloped wall in the kitchen? I got a felling this green, yellowish might be a bit too flashy for a kitchen... I like it in the living romo thugh above the window! Good catch! Here's some more pictures of the bedroom. A bit dark I know but best I can do atm. Maybe a quick summary: Sofa against the wall whre the tv is currently. Sofa color: light or dark grey. Model from my second post Light or dark grey rug depending on seat color. Maybe some small colors in the rug. Orange or green/yellowish accent color above the window. Acent color and position in kitchen tbd. White curtains top down against the window. Wall paint colors: ceiling white and wall beige as currently. Extra chair in the corner in same accent color TV hung up on the wall and console underneath (color tbd) Alocasia in the corner near radiator Kentia palmtree next to the TV Dining table: white with tempered glass (maybe) Cupboard: no idea so far. Good stuff, thanks!

The little gnatties like to feast on dead and decaying plant matter, and love it moist. Yep that 'covermoss' is prone to sheltering and keeping a colony of the little buggers. I clean up my plants and keep them 'clean' all the time (old leaves removed and no debris left in the top of the pot) and that helps some on not ever seeing them. I housesit for someone and she always comments when she comes back that I have cleaned up and cleaned out every one of her plants... she always has problems with various disease issues and if she would just CLEAN UP she'd have a lot less problems. Also, remove the trash immediately... she would have this big rolling garbage cans and wouldn't empty them for months on end. I remove my greenhouse trash when I'm through and ready to go back to the house. If I run into something like mealy bugs, that gets carried out immediately! (a local nursery has issues with it, anything you bring home from there has to be isolated and cleaned up) Between that friend and myself we have fought this war for fourth winter. I am now 'clean' and she is still having issues (I have also tossed a few plants to stop the infestation and she won't... so she keeps breeding more). If you get mealy bugs in your house and your houseplants; second worse is spider mites; you will have a long and hard one to get that one cleaned up. First picture, if you remove the few leaves you find and remove them from the area then wash up, you will probably get it right there. Missing one fleck, you will find first or second picture in 1-4 weeks. I don't spray because a lot of sprays they seemed to ignore; I killed the plant along with the bugs; and in my greenhouse I am doing semi-aquaculture and sprays/chemicals are not a good thing around the fish. I can tell you insecticidal soap has never seemed to work even if I pretty much drowned the plant in it and it usually has killed the plant at that level. I do 'clean up plants' and 'toss badly infected plants pot and all' ... at times I can find a part of the plant that is almost clean, hand clean a few small flecks off, and put it into an isolation cutting cup-and toss the main plant. In a few weeks either it has gone rampantly infected in which case I toss the whole cup, or it's clean yet and rooted so I can pot it up. I've cried over some plants I've tossed, but. Upper Left, Usually you will see just one or two flecks, underside of leaves, near a leaf to stem join, by the time you see this much you'll be well into the battle. Size of very small salt grains if that big. Upper Right, Well engaged, this is trim this off and remove it; or if the whole plant looks like this it's going to be tossed. Lower Left, if you see these, about the size of two to three salt grains glued together in a string, you have major problems Lower RightMature mealys, about 1/8 inch long, (3mm), and I usually see the matures as a light gray like this. The smaller is white, the mature is this grey, and they are highly detailed. Start checking all the plants around this one and be very serious about check EVERY bit. All it takes is one tiny white cottony looking fleck....