Amidst all our indoor work and my distaste for most things outdoors (i.e. bugs, dirt, bugs, heat, humidity, bugs...) I just let Hubby mow the yard every week and kind of ignored the rest.
Shamefully, it looked like this when we had a houseful of guests over for our son's 2nd birthday party!
Shameful. Overgrown trees, grass and weeds hiding the (albeit insufficient and delapidated) garden edging row the previous owner had "installed." (If installed means threw on the ground and never looked at again, so it was just strewn about, laying flat rather than being imbedded and standing from the ground.)
So, a few Saturdays ago, Hubby and I stuffed our toddler's belly full of breakfast, slathered ourselves (and the kid) with sunscreen and sunhats, and stepped outside to devote our morning to lawn work. Hubby worked on removing the retaining wall in the back yard while the kiddo sat in his wagon "helping" (that's toddler speak for eating Goldfish) while I spent 2 hours weeding the front beds. In that time, I filled 4 plastic grocery bags and got from the garage around to the first evergreen tree, at which point I found dried spiky droppings that made me bleed. So that week (late in the week when I could finally walk again...I had a serious hitch in my giddy-up for about 5 days after 2 hours squatting down!) I went out and bought some gardening gloves and finished the weeding the next Saturday.
Home Depot had some cheap-o pine mulch on sale for $1 per square foot, so we bought $10 worth and spread just enough around the front to minimize weeding efforts for the rest of the season before we will really landscape next spring.
Hubby also trimmed up the Bradford Pear tree so that the entire front of our house isn't hidden behind its leafy green-ness, and he removed the poison-ivy ridden garden underneath the tree to help maximize the view of the house from the street (and view of the street from the house). The stones that had
Now we are slightly less of the neighborhood eye-sore front yard! Voila!
We have some big plans for this fall and next spring. Ok, we mostly have big plans for what we want to remove. As for what we'll add, we're still weighing our options.
1. We will remove those two (formerly) sculpted spinning Juniper trees and try to relocate them to the east side of the back yard (where the retaining wall is almost completely removed now).
2. That big "weed-looking" sprout by the half-dead boxwood bushes is actually a Yellow Birch tree. We hope to transplant it to a yet-to-be-determined spot in the yard. As for both of these matters, mid-summer is not ideal transplanting time, so we will try to do that this fall so that the roots can rest and recover over the winter and begin to grow and flourish in their new spots next spring.
3. The hastas lining the walk to the front door are big and low-maintenance, which is great, but the giant buzzing bees swarming my front walk all day every day really freaks me out when I have to be on bee-duty just to go check the mail! So we may relocate some of those to the west side of the house and add some other plants there in that row along the garage wall.
4. Hubby is considering adding a Crepe Myrtle tree between the two front bedroom windows to add both height and color to the landscaping. There are plenty around the neighborhood for us to consider how much we would want to keep it trimmed or let it grow wild (keeping it narrow but letting it grow high seems to be our favorite option right now).
I'm so glad we have resuscitated the curb appeal of this house enough to not be embarrassed by it any longer! I know when Hubby finishes his masterful yard work out there, it will be the talk of the town, not the eyesore of the 'hood!
Not too shabby for only $10 spent (plus the cost of some garden gloves!)
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