Matt and I made great strides in the world of homeownership the past two months. We did the annual maintenance on our AC (by which I mean, we hired someone to do it for us). We fixed the toilet in the master bath so the chain doesn't catch (the lid was on wrong). We figured out how to restore power to the outlets in the bathroom when the breaker trips (this took three days and multiple google searches). We learned how to answer the much asked question "Do you have bermuda grass or St. Agustine?" (the answer being a little bit of both with a good mix of weeds).
Having tackled the basics of homeownership, we decided we were ready to tackle a bigger project: Re-landscaping the front yard. Why? Because we can.
Here is a before picture of the front yard:
There was nothing particularly wrong with the front yard, but we had an itch to do something different. Mostly, we wanted to have more flower beds so we had less grass to take care of. We also wanted more native plants that don't need much water. In short, we wanted to do a lot of work right now so we can do less work later.
We have spent a lot of time planning and drawing pictures of what we wanted to do in the front yard, but we weren't too sure what we wanted to do. Then one Saturday we were inside staring out at the front yard. We decided just to go crazy and do something right then. (This/ is how we end up doing most things.) So Matt grabbed a shovel and started digging up grass. I took the boys to Home Depot and bought supplies. I came back home and grabbed a shovel and dug up some grass. Matt went to Home Depot for more supplies. Howie looked for rolly polly bugs, and Henry played with sticks. Matt came back and installed metal edging. I started digging up plants. Matt went to Home Depot for more supplies. We both dug up plants and bushes and put them in plastic bags. Howie got bored of playing outside and went inside to watch TV. Henry fell asleep. I raked up our new flower bed. Matt went to Home Depot for more supplies. By 2:00 in the afternoon, the new flower bed was ready for plants and we were exhausted. We took the boys out to lunch and planned to call it a day.
But being crazy and re-energized by our tasty sandwiches and large quantities of Dr. Pepper, we decided not to call it a day after all. We drove to the nursery to pick out plants for our new flower bed. We kept the existing Mountain Laural (a beautiful tree that gets purple flowers that smell like lilacs) and bought another small one. We also got an agave, a red yucca, Mexican feather grass, and some little succulents of some kind.
Back at home we finished up our project. We planted everything and put down soaker hose and mulch. It was a long day and a lot of work, but the end result is beautiful. We are quite pleased with how it turned out. Here are some photos of the end result:
I don't think we are completely done with the front yard, but this was a good start. Later we want to do something with the island, and we are trying to replant the grass in the front yard to improve our grass to weed ratio. But for now we are feeling like proud homeowners.
