Spring Is Here!

Okay, it's official-- spring is here! The daffodils are out, and, of course, I couldn't resist picking a few for our dining room.

All of the blooms and buds are definitely putting a smile to my face, and I'm even more thrilled that all of this good weather will mean we get even more time to work on the house. Joan came for a long weekend visit this past weekend, so we enjoyed lots of time outdoors, enjoying the gorgeous weather and tackling yard work.

Joan helped us identify the many bushes and plants in our yard.

Since this is our first spring in the house, we weren't exactly sure what all might bloom. We have three main types of bushes: azaleas, boxwoods, and hollies.

Azaleas in the backyard:

Most of them seem to be planted in a bit of a hodgepodge manner, and the bushes in the front yard overwhelm the house and don't take advantage of the big window in the living room that overlooks the yard. One of our goals is to transform this:

into a flower bed that complements the window rather than hiding it. It looks like this weekend will be filled with bush removal (though we're hoping to replant the boxwoods along the fence as well as some of the azaleas).

Joan also got us started on our spring planting, so we have a nice punch of color at the windows at the back of the house.

The strawberry pot is filled with herbs and colorful flowers.

We pulled out a lot of weeds out of the flowerbed and plan on relocating the azaleas to another location in the yard (not sure exactly where yet). I think we're wanting to keep this area more of a flower bed / herb garden.
Even the stump was brightened with flowers (including a dwarf gardenia) and greenery.

A palm fern takes the place of a planter that used to hold weeds.

We also did some major pruning on this tree that separates our house from our neighbors, and even learned from our neighbor that this is a cherry wood tree. The bark, now revealed after the extensive pruning, is a deep reddish-brown and very smooth.

In fact, this is a cherry wood tree in our neighbor's yard.

We have four along the driveway, and they all look so much better now they're pruned.

And we're still on a mission to trap (well, kill) the mole that is taking over our front yard.

(I'll keep you posted as to whether we're successful.)

Tackling the shrubs

It was an intense battle Sunday afternoon (and on into evening). While the yard is nice and green, it hasn't been maintained, so the shrubs and plants are a bit sprawling (to say the least). In particular, the shrubs in front of the living room window had been driving me nuts because they were nearly reaching the roof (and blocking the majority of the front of the house, so people probably thought we lived like squirrels among the bushes). After we get our roller shades installed on the living room window, we plan on taking out ALL of the bushes under the window (in favor of a flower bed... or really anything that's not so overpowering), but until then we're leaving the bottom the window covered since our temporary blinds don't quite cover the window.

Anyhow, we set out to make the front window a bit more viewable. We started just trimming the really long branches, but that quickly turned into cutting back the back row of bushes (there are a total of three different types of bushes in that one area-- I'm not sure what look the previous owners were going for).


We did find an enormous (but harmless) spider residing on part of our bushes. And as much as I like that the spider eats bugs and whatnot, I didn't like the fact that he was so enormous and so close to the front door.


It really opened up the entire front of the house: