What is this?

Over the weekend we finally made it outside to work on our yard. With craft shows and being out of town, we just don't have a lot of weekend time to work on our house. So, we took advantage this weekend and worked out there both days. Several weekends ago (probably near two months ago), we tore out our lawn in the front. Okay, it wasn't really a lawn... it was more like a garden of weeds. We have had a pile of dirt sitting the front yard for near two weeks.

This weekend, we spread the dirt out in front in preparation for a new lawn and we enlarged the garden area in the back... and since we had additional dirt left, we also covered the old lawn in the back with a thin layer of dirt so that we could seed it. We'll see if it works. We figure if it doesn't, we can lay sod in the spring.

Anyhow, we pulled up all the plants in the front yard, shifted them around and got rid of ones that didn't fit into our vision. Of course, among the few plants, we found many large weeds - and a few volunteer plants. I'm not sure, but the one pictured reminds me of a birch tree... anyone know what it is? I'm trying to determine if it's worth saving or if I'd be putting time and effort into keeping a decent looking weed. Anyone? I have it currently planted in the only pot I could find - which is too small... so I'm not sure it'll survive anyhow.

Robbie is looking forward to getting a few new plants for his dinosaur garden. We made Lyssie's garden smaller - so he has some bad news coming... he's going to be sharing his now expanded garden with his sister. I have dreams of planting grapes. We'll see what we end up with.