When Spring Comes

I love spring.

Mostly I just love the light at the end of the tunnel. The mud drying up, the trees budding, all of it. It makes me motivated and happy, and ready for NEW and CLEAN!

Sad thing is, it’s only February 11th, it’s still like a month and a half until winter is over, but I see the signs! There are most definitely Crocus sprouting up in my yard, and the sun has been showing its beautiful self more often these days (even though everyone says it’s not gonna stay) and I am taking full advantage of it!

On Friday my mom, Mr. Gaunt and I went to the Northwest Flower and Garden Show in Seattle. It’s a huge yearly convention for gardening, I’ll blog about it probably tomorrow. Anyway we bought a few awesome new gardening tools, and today I decided to use the morning sun and put those new tools to work.

I wont lie, the summer burned me out on gardening, and we have hardly touched the yard since we got married. Needles to say, it looked like crap. So today we did the following:

-Raked all the pine needles and weird pine cones off the front lawn.

-Weeded the front beds.

-Dug up the 3 gross rose bushes from the front beds.

-Hacked back the big nasty corner bush (we need to rent a chainsaw to get the stump out)

-Edged the sidewalk

-Cleaned up the porch

-Pruned to side roses and cleaned up the brush

-Pruned our big evergreen tree.

On top of the front yard we also did a ton of work to the NASTY back yard. It was kind of a disaster. There was like old dead plants, wedding milk glass succulents everywhere, rotting pumpkins, garbage, oh lordy, embarrassing!

Things we did:

-Weeded all the beds, and completely cleared out the larger center bed. We actually have plans to lay grass over this bed this spring (more on this later)

-Cleaned up the mess of wood my brother left when he moved out.

-Transplanted all the Succulents from their Milk glass into their barrels, and drilled drainage holes in said barrels.

-Pruned the grapes.

-Pruned and tied up our prim rose-bush on the fence.

-Cleared out old dead Morning Glory vines from the fence.

-Threw away garbage, leftover pots, and other such nastyness.

-Hosed down the patio

-Hacked back the old dead blueberries (this will also be removed when we rent the chainsaw)

So yeah, the yard is looking way better. I mean, November-May everyone’s yard looks like muddy crap, but at least it’s cleaned up now, and we have a good start for Spring. We have some smaller scale plans for the back yard this year, but what we really want is to focus on the front lawn. I’m planning on re-shaping the front beds, edging, mulching, and planting some new shrubs. Also replacing the stepping-stones to new non broken ones. I would also loooove to dump some gravel on the driveway, as it’s a slip and slide mud fest right now, but we can’t afford that.

I also have two big blisters on my thumb, which is the only way you know you worked hard in your yard…duh. (:

 

Our Pink House

When we moved in the house looked a little something like this…

FEBRUARY 2011

Now it looks a like this…

JUNE 2011

Funny huh.  We did a tiny bit of landscaping too which makes it look a little better. My landlords picked the paint color, and while it’s not anything I would pick, it’s not bad. It’s unique. The doors still needs to be painted (black we think) along with the mailbox. There is also a little bit of trim on the right window that had to be repaired and will be painted later. Other than that I plan on ripping out that big UGLY bush on the right and putting in a white Lilac Tree that my brother gave me. I also think its funny how the tree in the foreground has gotten so lush!

A few other shots of the house

FEBRUARY 2011

JUNE 2011

In the back you can see where we put in the patio. Also before there was a large dirt bed (on the left) and two circle beds in the middle that we filled using the grass from the patio spot. I’m so pleased with how well the grass took, you cant even see the spots! I would like to re-lay the stones the are to the left of the porch where the hose is. The hose had a really awful leaking problem and it became a mud zone over there. Other than that the walk was edged and things were just cleaned up a bit. Oh and all the gutters were also replaced.

FEBRUARY 2011

JUNE 2011

MAY 2011

JUNE 2011

JUNE 2011

Tada! Oh the wonders that paint and spring can do for a house! Oh and in case anyone really wants to know, the colors are Benjamin Moore BAKED TERRA COTTA and FRAPE

Patio In the Works

This was all done a couple of weekends ago. I’m hoping we can maybe use my moms car tomorrow to get the rest of the bricks. I wont lie, we are really winging this project, but its going ok. It’s not perfectly level, or straight, but were doing it ourselves. We are about half way done now. I need to have my dad come over and assess the project. Speaking of my dad, he’s kind of a lawn mowing expert. He came over  and mowed/weedeatered my whole lawn, it looked awesome! He looked pretty cool too…lol!

We also edged the front walk and around the little stepping-stones. Makes it all look a lot cleaner. Today I removed two dead bushes from the right bed, and we planted a Columbine (the Colorado state flower) and some wild flower seeds. We also made two herb gardens in some big pots my mom gave us. They are loving the rain in the morning and sunshine in the afternoon. I can’t wait for the gutters to be replaced and the outside of the house to be painted too, hopefully next month.

Obviously that first stone might need to be replaced...lol.