Outdoor transformation

I mentioned earlier in the week (when discussing our wildlife preserve) that we spent quite a bit of time outside this past weekend. That's really a bit of an understatement. We worked our bums off! And I have mucho proof of that hard work.

We had a bit of a head start as both of us were not working Friday. The husband laid the sod while I ran a morning errand and we spent the afternoon prepping the large bed in the front yard. We dug up any remaining roots and worked some compost into the soil. We were able to plant most of the back row of bushes before heading out for Mexican and NCAA basketball watching.

Saturday was a busy and full day of outside work. We removed the rock wall to make room for the new plants and finished planting the bed. We began the task of putting in a new rock wall and started mulching. We ended a bit earlier to head downtown for dinner at T'afia (where we had a chef spotting - yes, I'm a total nerd - but Chef Monica Pope is awesome and it was really cool knowing that she was working the kitchen while we were there).

The end of Day 2: Covered in dirt and thanks to some poorly applied spray sunscreen Saturday - burned.

We finally finished up the front at 1:30pm Sunday. We spent the morning completing the rock wall and mulching the remaining part of the bed.

Before I give you the finished front, lets review how it started!

We started with this overgrown mess.

The husband despised the ivy so we removed it and added a rock wall border to the beds.

We pruned the bushes on the left side and painted the door.

 We had the trees removed.

We removed the bushes on the left of the door.

Can you spot the dogs?

And now for the finale!

Little baby bushes that you can barely see, a new rock wall, and grass!

Why did we do all of this when it seemed perfectly reasonable to have all of those bushes and trees in the front yard? Here are our main reasons:

1. We had a terrible time growing grass in most of the front yard because of the trees
2. Three trees planted within five feet of one another is pretty much a disaster anywhere, but especially in Texas where we have drought-like conditions
3. Each tree grew in its own strange way as a reaction to the others, thus removing one or two trees would still leave us with a mess of a tree or two
4. The bushes were so overgrown you could barely see the house and were so poorly maintained that pruning did not improve their appearance
5. Our house faces South East, so we get most of our really hot sun in the back corner and back of the house - removing the front trees does not affect our heating and cooling tremendously

We planted a row of Azaleas, a row of Mondo grass, and a row of Mexican Heather - here are some closer pictures.

Our first azalea bloom

Mexican Heather

The husband was outside playing blog photographer at my request when our neighborhood House of the Month committee members came by. The three women told him that they loved what we had done! That surely makes me feel a lot better about our first major outside planting project!