It's a Jungle Out There

It was a jungle out there anyway. In the last few weeks our yard went from looking like this

to this

Since from the above picture you can't really get the full effect of how out of hand things were, allow me to show you a close up.

Honey I Shrunk the Kids flashbacks anyone? The grass wasn't the only thing that was out of hand either. We didn't really rake up the leaves last fall like we probably should have, so our fence row had quite the pile of leaves blown up against it. So, while Jake picked up trash that had drifted into our yard and started trimming the bushes, I raked all the leaves away from the fence so that we could mow over them and create a natural mulch-like effect.

In one corner of the yard the leaves had actually built up about 2 feet high, and in a flower bed no less, so it wasn't the easiest trying to remove the leaves without mangling the daffodils and irises. There were a few casualties, but no flower massacre or anything like that.

While I was working on the leaf raking, Jake was busy trimming the bushes in the front and back. The bushes actually create a border above the retaining wall in front of our house, and they were getting pretty unruly. But Jake got out there and told them what was up, and they are looking pretty good now. You can see the difference in this picture between the right side of the bushes that Jake had trimmed and the left side that was in the process of getting its buzz cut.

Since we like to get the bulk of our yard work taken care of in one day so that there's only maintenance to take care of the rest of the summer, we also cleaned out the flower beds, planted some seeds, mulched, mowed, and burned all the bush trimmings, as well as the rest of our burn pile (including our Christmas tree that has been out there since January). In all it was a pretty productive day, and we can't help but smile every time we've looked at the yard today because of the major improvement.

And here's a parting look at the front of the house with the newly trimmed bushes and nice, short grass.

Whew, now that that's taken care of we can get back to working on the back room renovation. It's getting closer to being finished, but there's still a lot to do before the final before and after reveal.