Tuesday, April 28, 2009

landscaping weekend in review



We bought our house almost exactly two years ago.

And let me first start off by saying that we haven’t exactly been lazy when it comes to our house over the past two years.

And although the first summer was by far the most difficult in terms of projects and remodeling, we have not waned in our desire to complete the projects on our master-house-to-do-list.

The first summer was all about packing and unpacking, painting each room (my jobs) and tearing out and remodeling the kitchen and the bathroom, re-doing the driveway (his job), putting on a new roof (roofer’s job) and the list could go on and on…

By our first winter we were burned out and took some time to lay low, decorate, unpack and turn our house into a home.

By summer number two “we” decided (against my will) to power wash, scrape, prep, prime and paint the outside of the house ourselves.

I was promised that when the house was done, it would be my turn to start the landscaping…

Needless to say, the house took longer than expected and we ended up hiring out to spray the final coat…in September…

So my dreams of a garden were put on hold another year.

Our front yard lay bare throughout another winter, so when April rolled around this year we set out to plan our landscaping.



It started with graph paper, where each of us drew our rendition of the front of our house, with our landscaping plans…

They hung on the fridge like kindergarten fingerpaintings for days before we actually set to work.

Last Thursday we got a truckload of dirt dumped onto our driveway – 2,000 pounds to be exact, along with two dwarf Alberta spruce trees that I saw and fell in love with at the garden center near our house.

Friday Curtis took a vacation day to start moving it, creating beds and filling holes in order to appease my antsiness for a full day of planting on Saturday.



Saturday we woke up and made an efficient and quiet pleasant trip (despite a traffic ticket on the way home) to another garden center where we found everything we were looking for, before heading home on a mission to dig holes and plant bushes and trees.

My mom, a gardening-lover, me us at our house and the three of us set to work (with the sporadic help of my delegator-father) solidifying our layout and planting six winter boxwoods, three rhododendron and one red sunset maple tree.

We planted grass seed, built up the beds, watered and stood back to appreciate our handiwork – all while praying that our thumbs turn green before anything dies.



So now we wait.

We wait and water and hope that grass grows and the tree blooms and we can find some cute little summer flowers to line the front of each bed.

It’s a good feeling to come home from work, to drive up the driveway and see our house, complete with fresh paint, roof, shutters, gutters and now fresh landscaping.

Aahhhh…home sweet home!

2 comments:

www.thecrazydaisies.wordpress.com said...

Very cute! Those are exactly the trees I've been searching for to put on the side of my front door. Great minds.... :)

Marisa said...

your house is super cute! i love love love the crisp white paint. when she was out here last month, rachel was telling me about all the work you guys have done to your house. i would love to see a "before" picture, because the after looks amazing. :)

 
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