I have been a bad blogger but my parents have been here since last Friday and I have been busy working and hanging out with them! It is always a lot of fun to have them out here and every time they are here we manage to tackle a big house project. These projects are usually unplanned but somehow always manage to happen. This time the project became our front yard landscape. Ever since we moved in I have hated our landscape, especially the mess on the corner. My mom LOVES to garden and has wanted to help us with this area since we moved in 4 years ago. This morning we planned to work in the yard for a couple of hours in order to pull up some ground cover, weed and lay new bark in the corner. 6-7 hours later we had managed to pull up ground cover, weed, lay new bark, rip out crabgrass, rip out a dead bush, rip out a dead tree, plant a new tree, plant at least 20-25 plants and flowers, pot a plant, lay down grass seed in bare areas, hose off the front area, spray paint a decorative table, make a trip to the dump, make 4 trips to Fred Meyer and spend a lot of money!!! Apparently I got my obsessiveness from my parents (once we start we just have to finish the job)! It looks super nice though and I am so happy with how it turned out.
I've come to realize that I love a good 'before' and 'after' photo montage, so here you go!
I forgot to take some true 'before' pictures before we got started and didn't think of it until about halfway through, but this shows how gross our old bark was
Here's the dead bush that my mom managed to kill a couple of winters ago when she was pruning and cutting back our bushes
My dad getting ready to take out the dead bush
Notice the dead tree in the background
This tree died last year and we never got around to digging it out due to a lack of desire to do yard work. We can always think of better things to do on weekends. Secretly we were hoping to sell the house before the Spring and leave it for the next owners to deal with (how horrible is that?!)
Here is the new corner landscape in all its glory!
It probably doesn't look that different in the pictures but the change is pretty drastic
No more dead tree in the background
We filled the hole left by the tree with grass seed, so hopefully it does well and we have luscious green grass in a month or so
Here is our new tree, a weeping Japanese Maple. It is so cute and I love how it looks!
My mom brought out and planted 3 flower pots for the front of our house, which look fantastic and add a lot of color!
My mom is hoping that this might be the start of my green thumb and desire toward yard work. I don't think I will spend hours every week puttering around in my "garden" but it is fun to actually have a nice looking yard (it only took us 4 years)!
