Fall Begins

It is the beginning of fall now and I just returned home from my month long trip in York, PA. (More on that later). A week ago when I was travelling home I was under the impression that my courtyard and all my flowers would already be dead. Boy was I ever wrong..

Not only has everything seemed to get more massive but my day lilies are actually blooming for the first time! They are lovely! I had bought these from Lowes earlier in the year, they were in the clearance plant section for $2 each. When I bought them I was convinced they were going to die and here they are all the way into October and blooming!

We even had a nice little crop of green chile to pick when I returned. I cannot wait to eat them!

The front yard is also looking amazing. Everything is still blooming and going strong. I cannot believe how big all of the plants are.

Under the tree looks pretty good, even though some of the plants are definitely starting to die from the cold weather.


While I was gone, Geoff was a sweetheart and finished up the front yard. Now that all the gravel is finish and the stone walkway is in place we realized things look a little bare. We are not sure yet to do about this, so realize there is still room for improvement. It does look a lot better though, thanks Geoff!

What do you think? Does the front yard look bare now or unbalanced? Have any ideas how to remedy this issue?

Progress on The Front

Like I said on Friday, we had plans to finish the front yard over the weekend. We didn't exactly finish it but I am proud to say that we did make some great progress. Sunday we worked our butts off. We first removed the old torn weed blocker and as much bark as we could. The rest got racked into a pile toward the front of the yard.

Next, we took all the path way stones and came up with a possible path layout. I also started trimming the sage bushes, notice the one on the left.

Next, we leveled the path area starting closest to the house and laid the weed blocker, gravel and the first of the pathway stones.

We got the pathway about half done. We realized that the stones we had collected were a little too small so three or four did not even get used. Another trip to the ranch is definitely in our future.

We really wanted to get as much done as possible but we ran out of pathway stones, weed blocker and clean gravel. The gravel is coming from the backyard so some it is full of dirt. So we had to stop at around half way. We are so happy we got that much done. We still have the front half of the yard to bag and now we have to sift the gravel in the back but we are getting so close it the finish line. This whole gravel and pathway project has only cost is $10 for the weed blocker. We couldn't be more happy about that.

We plan to get the rest done over the week. Wish us luck!

Front yard continued

For the 4th of July weekend we did a bunch of work on the front yard. We bought a ton of flowers for under the tree with a birthday gift card. Thanks Alta! From far away you can barely see them.

Up close though you get a great view.

You can see in this picture that we still have a lot of work to do under the tree to clean up the branches that had grown from the bottom. We also had not planted the 2 front flowers yet they are still in their pots in this picture.  We are still trying to figure out what we really want in the very middle. I am starting to think that we should just buy 3 more of the tall blue flowers and call it a day. They are agapathus if you are wondering.

Here are the flowers from the walkway side. It looks so lovely and welcoming with so many flowers. We can't wait for them to get bigger.

Geoff and I went to a local nursery and found a ton of fun plants for the yard. The best part was that they were 99 cents a plant. we got our rock garden ground cover plants, and a bunch of plants for our front window area. Here is a shot of part of the rock garden. I haven't taken a wide shot of the finished product yet.

This morning we worked on the front window area. We started and finished it today in a few hours. It was a tough job, we had to remove all the gravel which was mixed with dirt that was about 5 inches deep. Shovel by shovel we removed the mixture and sifted the gravel. Placing the nice clean dirt back into the area which took us around 2 hours. After levelling the area we added garden soil and started placing large rocks and our new plants. It turned out a lot better than I was expecting.

Its hard to tell in these pictures with the shadows but there are alot of plants in this area. We went with a more natural looking planting, with all the rock and randomly placed plants.

I need to get a couple more pictures of the area but its done! We finished all the plant areas of our front yard. Now we just have probably the hardest area left which is everything in front of the tree. We need to remove all of the old bark, lay down a ton of weed guard, gravel and add a flagstone walkway. It's definitely the most time consuming and hard labor project for the front yard.  Hoping we can get it done sooner than later.

Starting on the front yard

We continued our landscaping projects by moving to the front yard. It has been something we have really wanted to tackle since we moved in. Our curb appeal is pretty terrible and we are the house right in the middle of our cul-de-sac, so when you drive down our road you stare at our house the whole way. We started last week by tackling the small project of clearing out a section of flower bed next to the walk way. We decided to make a rock garden and continue the gravel into front yard area. We cleaned out the area and then replaced the weeds with a weed guard, clean gravel and rocks from the ranch to add interest.

We are planning on planting some ground cover plants here to add some interest and color. A couple of days later we created a tree ring with some rocks from the ranch. We wanted to plant flowers under the tree and raise the level of the ground around it so that the roots would actually be covered.

Also cutting out all of the bush at the bottom to make it an actual tree and open up the space some more. Yay for being able to see the house.

There are still large branches at the bottom that need to be sawed off  and we are still cleaning up the base of the tree but its a great start. Just removing the old bark and the random tree branches has been a huge improvement.

The Front Yard

From day one the front yard has not looked its best. Over grown plants, nasty dried out mulch, and weeds galore. The curb appeal or lack there of was and is a turn off for this house. The day Geoff convinced me to look at this house I was not in any way shape or form impressed with the front yard.

I can honestly say that there is nothing at all that I like about this front yard. My first impression may not have been the best but I knew that this was a great opportunity for us. A small diamond in the rough so to speak. Crappy front yard, (check) crappy flooring throughout the house (check) and ugly ugly paint colors (check). This was the chance to prove to ourselves that we could indeed take on a huge project together and come out better on the other side. A true test to see how well we could work together as a couple to accomplish the home we have always wanted for our first home.

I planned on making our first project for this house the front yard, however the obnoxious paint colors and the fear of baking my skin and getting a horrible sunburn before our wedding changed my mind. Even after the wedding had passed and the paint on the walls had dried the front yard was still the furthest from being on the top priority list. We had planned on making it number one but traveling makes plans change. Why would we want to work on a yard when we are never home to do the up keep in the first place. Now 2 years later it is beginning to creep back up on the priority list, in fact it hit number one when we were home in May.

It's not like we did the whole front yard project in one shot, nope that would be way too much for little ole me. I decided to tackle this beast in steps. That way I can formulate a solid plan for what the final product will look like. Everyone goes through it, throwing out ideas, seeing which stick, seeing which are the most plausible to pull off, and of course how much the final project is going to cost. I feel the last one is the biggest decision maker of them all. How deep are your pockets for each project? How much are you really going to enjoy X if you get exactly what you planned? Is your plan going to bring value not only to your home but also your life? There is so much to think about when making plans for home improvement. It amazes me how many questions there can be for one project. Honestly, it really slows me down, a lot.

With all that said I normally try and tackle as many of the for-sure-no-matter-what projects as I can. With the front yard there are a few that can be tackled with or without a plan. Starting with weed and plant removal.

That is what I started with.

First, I removed the huge overgrown hedge at the front window. So much more work than I ever thought.

I thought that this was going to be an easy job.. honestly look at the size of that hedge! What was I thinking? It seriously took me eleven of those 55 gallon black trash bags plus our city trash can and 5 hours to take it down by myself. The most time consuming part was clean up of course.

At first progress was slow. I didn't know exactly how I was going to tackle this plant and I honestly thought all of the clippings were going to fit nicely into our big city trash can.. Boy was I ever wrong.... There was no way that was all going to fit in the trash can.. Seriously at this point I had already filled it to the top.. So I shut the lid on the trash can and had Geoff grab me a box of trash bags while he was out for lunch.

Thankfully Geoff got me those bags. Not only did I have to deal with the actual hedge clippings but there was also a nice layer under the hedge of dead plant material and dried mulch that I was not expecting to find. That was two bags itself.  As I got further along on my hedge removal journey I found something I was not expecting...

A nice pipe in the middle of it all. I am not even sure what it is for... whatever at least it wasn't a hand or a dead animal! I never realized how big this hedge actually was! It even wrapped around the house. Once I got all the actual green parts of the hedge cut off I realized I was not going to be able to finish this project on my own. Those roots were just too much for me to budge! So in comes Geoff to save the day!

A few hours/days later he had all the roots removed! Yippee! I cannot believe how naive I was thinking that whole thing was going to fit into the trash can... Duh! I dont know I guess I bit off more than I could chew. O well! Honestly though it looks fantastic! I am so pleased with the results of our hard work. So the count right now is Steph and Geoff 2---- Plants 0... mauhahaha!

Doesn't that look so much better?!

What should we tackle next? Removal of more plants? or Removal of nasty mulch? Maybe both? Or maybe just remove it all everything?!?!?!?!..... We will see...