The Front Yard is Done

The front of our house for a while looked like this, with the green shutters and the awkward garden bed. IMG_5706

Then we had the fence installed and the shutters and trim painted.

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Awkward garden bed remained.

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But this was the plan:

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A few weeks ago we had some lovely yard folks clear out the garden bed, expand it to be parallel with the front porch, and rototiller in about 10 bags of compost to amend the soil. They failed to remove all of the tree roots from the VERY large tree nearby, which made the digging of holes ROUGH.

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I then went with a co-worker of mine to pick out plants for the front bed and thank the sweet baby Jesus that we had his help. He worked his tail off helping us... LB almost died pushing this cart without the benefit of vision.

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We got home and my co-worker and I spaced everything out on the weed blocker goodness that our yard guys had put down. IMG_7245

I did too much that weekend...

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...but we got everything in and two weeks later, EVERYTHING IS STILL ALIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's a miracle!

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We planted everything and then went to get soaker hoses. In hindsight, I probably would have opted for spray soaker hoses so that we wouldn't have to be soooooo careful about where to try to bury them. But we are doing soaker hoses for about an hour at night and then a quick spray watering as well. IMG_6174

We also just got about 20 bags of mulch from Home Depot, LB spread it all around, and we called it a day. IMG_6176 IMG_6189 IMG_6193

I am quite happy with my new view from the front porch.

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As fall and winter come, I have no idea what I am supposed to do/not do, so let's just hope I can keep these babies alive.

Small Changes out Front

Last week I posted about the plans that Ainslie had to take the front of our house from this: IMG_2019

To this:

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Since executing this plan is a hefty chunk of change, we remain unsure about whether or not we will eventually do the whole darn thing. However, we are implimenting a few of the smaller changes immediately.

This weekend, I used the NextDoor App and posted "Free red bricks." Within 10 minutes, a guy came in his truck and took every last one of them. I already think it looks better.

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We are going to remove the grass that separates these two areas and put down soil with some bark on top for now. Basically, it will be dirt up to the drain. The area where the pine tree used to be (the far left after the black drain) is actually supposed to be rocks/is currently rocks underneath. DAMN PINE TREE! So we are going to do soil all the way to the neighbor's driveway so that the new garden bed is perpendicular to the house.

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So basically this:

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What is going to separate the flower bed from the gravel, you ask?

A wood fence!

We are going to get rid of the metal fence in the backyard all the way around, but for now we are going to have the wood fence/fence gate be perpendicular to the side of the house and be the new opening to the backyard.

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This means that the giant metal fence/gate thing is going bye bye soon-ish.

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In order to create better backyard access once the new fence is in, we will re-gravel and then put pavers/stepstones all the way to the back door. I love that I don't even really know what to call them, but we are doing this anyway. **Quietly stepping on soapbox** That's the thing about DIY/home projects. You just have to commit. You have to dive in and try and do it. None of this oh-I-am-a-girl or I-have-no-idea-what-I-am-doing crap. Just freaking TRY. Ask questions and TRY. **stepping down...**

As for the front porch, I recently ordered this light that Ainslie recommended from Build.com to replace the janky white one that is out here.

Outdoor light

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I love that she picked one that matches the form of our Ballard Designs lights inside the house. Light besties!

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All we need now is to get a ton of dirt and bark and shovels and a fence and figure out what this random piece of cement was doing underneath the red bricks. :)IMG_5703

It never ends I tell ya. Never.