We hired our neighbor, who is a landscaping genius, to make over the beds around our house, and the result is remarkable. My small contribution (apart from a sizeable financial investment) was to festoon the yard with soaker hoses to water the new plants.
I also received a long awaited copy of the third volume in Michael Holroyd's biography of George Bernard Shaw. I couldn't resist skimming the pages, which only confirmed how thoroughly crazy Shaw became in his later years.