The State of Our Yard

Sorry for the lack of posts this week. I was in Tampa for a business meeting and just returned home late last night – thankfully the tropical storm didn’t prevent me from getting back home!

A lot of the work we’ve done around our house lately involves our landscaping. But we have a LONG ways to go, including items that need to be done yet this year, some on a five year plan and some even further out than that. At times, the idea of our yard seems rather intimidating {our front yard is rather manageable because it is smaller, but our back yard is rather large – with our lot being shaped like a piece of pie}. So, we’re taking these slowly and doing a little here and there.

We met with a tree specialist a few weeks back, and if you follow me on Instagram, he pronounced two of our trees “dead” – a pine in our back yard and the huge oak tree in our front yard.  It was a sad day. Fortunately, the oak has been showing sporadic signs of life this last week, so we have opted to hold out hope and not have it removed at this point.

{taken 5/21 – notice the two other oaks you can see in the background were much more progressed at that point}

{taken last night – we also found a lot more live buds about to open}

Over Memorial Day weekend, I took care of trimming the bushes on our upper hill. We aren’t entirely sure what they are {possibly dogwoods} and the prior homeowners had plans to remove all of them because they didn’t like the stickly shapes either. However, I decided to prune them back quite a bit and now they will work for the time being to see if ultimately they will work in the long run. There were 15-20 of these on our hill some standing nearly six feet tall, with the bulk of the plant only 1-2 feet off the ground. Now it is much more appealing to look back up on the hill.

{you can barely see the dead pine in the right corner of this photo}

{after the trim job}

{SUCH a better view with out the random, mostly bare sticks standing up every few feet – again you can see the dead pine here}

I also picked up a begonia plant for the courtyard trellis from Home Depot for only $14.99 that same weekend. It was a bargain compared to everything else I had seen and the plant is beautiful.

Last Friday, we met with a landscaper. The nursery that created our subdivision is right around the corner, and they only charge $35 to have a landscaper come out, make recommendations, draw a blueprint out of the plants they recommend in your yard, and then if you buy ANY plants from them you get the $35 back! Not bad. He had some great advice, and we look forward to getting the plans back in another week. We asked that he break each area of our yard down into manageable sections so we can handle a project or two each year.  Nothing crazy to break our backs or the bank.

One recommendation was to tear out the spirea in our front yard around the stone pedestal my planters sit on. Our front yard needs more color and some plants, like these, are planted much to close to the grass line and are starting to look overgrown. I got started that night and quite after one. These bad boys are huge and NOT easy to get out!

{this photo should give some perspective on just how big these plants are!}

My planters have made significant progress and I couldn’t be more pleased. Each passing week, I’m convinced they triple in size.

{here they are the day I plated them – 5/12}

{here they are on 5/27 after two weeks of growth}

{here they are last night, 6/7 – the petunias have gone CRAZY!}

Needless to say, we’re making some progress. But, it is certainly a long road, and much like our house, I need to attack everything with baby steps and not feel like it all has to look perfect day one.