Landscaping

Good Morning! My Monday was very long, so I'm glad that it is finally over!

Last night we tried to get some things done around the house since we didn't do any work on the house over the weekend. Mostly we just cleaned up, but we also talked about what exactly we wanted to do to the house. We are trying to figure out just what to do with the back yard (which I cannot wait to enjoy now that the weather is so nice!).

The shrubs around Our Old Colonial were left to grow for 2 years before we moved in... or so we thought... after talking to a couple of neighbors it sounds like it was left to grow for slightly longer, perhaps even the entire time the previous owners resided in the house. So we have a lot of time to make up for.


[This photo is from our first visit to the house, by the time we bought the house the entire area had grown 4 feet!]

There is a lot of work that needs to be done to get the house looking good again. We are going to pressure wash the outside and then decide whether or not we need to paint the exterior. The shutters definitely need to be painted and of course the roof needs to be replaced. And then there is the lawn...

The backyard was the worst in terms of being overgrown, Matt had to be very patient with the lawnmower the first time he mowed. Fortunately, the front lawn was kept up much better and just needed a quick trim.

We also need to trim back a lot of the bushes. There are two butterfly bushes that are overgrown in front of the house and blocking our view when we come out of the driveway. In the back there is ivy growing up our beautiful pine trees and over the fence into our neighbor’s yard [sorry Bob!]. The ivy is so bad it has even knocked over a section of the fence, it is currently being propped up with a fallen branch so that Brady cannot escape.


[We are tearing down that lattice-it is awful!]

Another item that needs to be taken care of is the mosquito breeding pond in the backyard. The pond is all hooked up with a pump and has some water plants in it, but it doesn’t have any water and it isn’t running. So we need to decide whether we are keeping it or tossing it [or selling it]. Right now I’m leaning toward getting rid of it, I don’t think that I would really be able to maintain it and it isn’t really big enough to be a focal point. But, I’m still debating.