hello gorgeous

Summer has finally arrived and I have already forgotten what snow looks like and what it was like to be cold :). Not quite, but I wanted to show off some pictures of our yard because I’m so proud of it and of Dan for all his hard work!

When we bought the house, the yard was a big mess. We honestly considered taking out the entire yard and re-sodding it. Luckily we didn’t and we have been able to salvage the yard! There are still weeds to get rid of and some bare patches to fill in, but I’m amazed and how thick and green the yard has gotten! All the grass was brown and looked dead. There were huge weeds all over and the only flower bed (on the left) was all weedy. We added new flower beds on the right side of the porch and all the way around the whole house. We also added flower beds in the backyard. I still want to add hanging flowers and stuff on the porch, but that will come later! Luckily the sprinklers work really well and with Dan’s hard work perfecting them, they work great! On the left side of the house there was a huge bare spot with dirt and weeds. We (Dan) cleared it out and we put down a gravel parking strip. Thanks to Dan’s huge family, we pounded out the gravel in about an hour! Here is a closer look at the parking strip. Dan daydreams about it being the home of a future boat! The fire pit in the backyard is in the work and will hopefully be finished in the next few weeks! We ordered all the stone for the retaining wall and fire pit and are having it delivered on Monday. We will put gravel on the floor and have steps going down into the fire pit area. I want to build a few benches for that area as well. It will be so fun for the summer and fall!

Some close ups of the flowers in the front yard. We had no idea what we were doing so we just bought a bunch of flowers and we learned a lot! Almost everything has survived, but I’ll probably add more to fill it in and we will definitely be adding to it and tweaking it next year. Dan made this awesome drip/spray system so that is the tubing you see. With more plants and flowers, it will be hidden a little better but it works really well! In the picture above on the top right you can see two dark green stripes. Those are from March when Dan had the fertilizer sprayer on the wrong setting and it came out too fast! We have two awesome stripes around our whole front yard and they haven’t faded at all! I love it. Backyard shots. I am still planning on re-staining the back steps and painting the back door this summer. The grass looks so so so much better than a few months ago and I can’t believe it! Dan has worked so hard and I love him for it! We both go and pick weeds and spray the lawn together and I really love doing it together. There is still a lot to do (isn’t there always?), but we’re loving the house and definitely staying busy!