Fancy this?

I got the harebrained idea a little while ago that I wanted to dress up the area around the entrance to my yard. The problem was that the ground there is very hard from years of the clay road washing into that area. Also, my current water hose does not reach that far, so any plants that I planted would have to be somewhat drought tolerant.

Also, I have very little money to dedicate to such a project.

So. . .here's what I came up with:

I divided some of my African Iris that were in another flower bed.

Then I picked up two large bulbines from Wal-Mart.

I might add that it was EXTREMELY difficult to plant the iris. The ground was so hard that when I finally got done digging the holes, my shoulder (injured back in August) was KILLING ME. Therein, I let the flowerbed simmer for a few days while I iced both my shoulder and back.

Now my dilemma was what to use as a border around the bed. I wanted it to look kinda funky, because my yard is full of quirky art and cool plants. I looked on Google for unique flower bed border ideas, and this was one of the images that came up:

Those are mostly wine bottles, and I knew I'd never be able to drink anywhere near enough wine to save bottles for a full border of them. Well, maybe, but it'd take years and years.

So I mulled over it for a while.

I was lying in bed early one morning trying to convince myself to get up and take a shower, when it hit me. 
What if I didn't use all bottles?
What if I used some stone and some glassware?

I had some patio stones already in my yard, left there by a previous tenant. They were large enough that I would only need a few bottles to use as spacers. But I didn't want to use just any old bottle, beer or wine.
I wanted to use blue bottles. Which meant. . . .

Just so you know, I did not have Bud Light Platinum bottles just sitting around my house. Had to go buy some. Even then, it still didn't end up being enough, so I had to go buy more. But, two runs to Walgreens was enough.

I dug a trench around the plantings (the digging was done after about three days of rain. . .softer clay by then) and plunked in the stones so that half was left above ground. In between each I placed a blue bottle (sticky labels removed) neck-end down into the dirt. This left the thicker body part sticking up out of the ground, and VOILA. . .

I'm still working on ideas for more yard dressing. I might even paint some patterns on those stones.
But, it's a start that I'm excited about.

Now if only the cold weather would go away so I could really get some dirt-digging on!