Long Weekend in the Jungle

Most people think of Memorial Day weekend as the unofficial start of summer and the first opportunity to head to the beach or spend the day on the lake. This year, for Sam and I, we decided to take advantage of the opportunity that presented itself and use my dear, sweet Momma, and all of her landscaping talents and overhaul our new yard.

As newlywed's and first home renters, a yard is a new and exciting thing for us... but this one was a little daunting. Momma came down Friday night to spend the weekend with us, and when I woke up Saturday morning, she was already tackling what I thought was an overgrown tree. Boy was I wrong!...

As you can see this monstrosity was taking over a fence that was hiding under the depths of its shady foliage, but what appeared to be a tree in bad need of some grooming was actually a VINE!!! Who in their right mind would plant such a thing, I'll never know. After hours of cutting, ripping, and ultimately wrestling with these thorny vines, we conquered (sort of)! Mom wanted to simply chop it down, but I convinced her that as we are renting, we probably shouldn't destroy the property. Here is an after shot of the much needed hair cut!

And with that we were off to a long weekend of learning all about our jungle of a yard and slowly taming this new responsibility of adulthood. The first thing I learned: landscaping is a fortune, literally. Grass alone can make you cringe at the checkout! And who knew there were so many types of fertilizer! Thankfully, we have a very small back yard, but it was really overgrown. This property is over 50 years old, and I believe that pretty much everything is original. All of the bushes and trees are HUGE and they haven't been maintained in quite sometime. Which leads me to the second lesson I learned: it's much easier to maintain a yard in good shape than one that has run amuck! But in the end with a lot of help from Mom, we have a neat little yard. Now we just have to wait for the grass to grow!

Here is a shot of one of the Camellia in the back yard that Mom trimmed back in to shape (they looked like giant balls before). And as you can see they are huge!!!

We also planted three Hydrangea (my favorite). Two are the traditional ones that are blue or pink depending on your soil's pH, but one I just couldn't pass up is called Peppermint. It's petals are variegated pink and white to look like, well a peppermint!

We also spruced up the front of the yard with some new hanging baskets and planters filled with Impatiens since pretty much our whole yard is shady! Here's a before and after of the front of the house.

By the end of the weekend we were all pretty tired, but I have to admit that I'm pretty pleased with the results. It wasn't a lot, but it certainly made the view from the kitchen window much more pleasant and it made our house feel a little bit more like home.