No Rest for the Wicked

If that phrase is true, that there's "no rest for the wicked", Mike and I must be terribly wicked. For about 3 weeks now we have been working on getting our yard looking better and believe me when I say, there was only one direction for it to go. This began with hiring a cowboy tree cutter to cut down a huge Oak tree in our back yard along with many branches on most all the other trees in our front and back yard. The weekend after that was done, there was more than a weekend's worth of raking leaves and cleaning up the front and backyards. Kids did their part, all the while whining and arguing and being generally normal kids. Thankfully, Nana saved the two little ones for awhile and Anna had a friend over which kept her out of our hair while we could continue to work. Poor Mike busted his nose and got a terrible case of poison ivy. There's another phrase that rings true after the first weekend we worked on the yard...it's got to look worse before it looks better. Unfortunately, I only took pictures AFTER the clean up.

This in only half of the leaves, trash and such we left for big pick up.

Front yard after clean up.

Another view of the front yard after clean up.

Part of the back yard after clean up.

Other half of backyard after clean up.

By Monday, Mike and I were moaning and groaning with every step we took, but truly enjoyed how the yard was looking, even if it still looked pretty bad. That next weekend we went camping and left the yard is it was.

This past weekend, we were at it again. Talk about dropping some cash! While focusing on the flower beds around the front yard trees, we bought at least 14 bags of soil and about 8 bags of miracle grow soild and about 8 bags of mulch (honestly I lost count). The kids helped us at Lowe's while we chose flowers and plants to use. Purslane, heather, dusty miller, and pentas were chosen to start off with.

Anna fell in love with some of the cactus plants. We didn't tell her, but Mike and I had just been discussing how much we dislike cacti in flower beds. However, we did buy her a pot that had several really good looking cacti in a nice looking planter. Anna's going to find a place in the backyard to keep her cactus plants.

Oh, I almost forgot my favorite...we got a lemon tree! This coming weekend it will be planted in the backyard.

We are grateful and ungrateful for the previous owners. For whatever reason, they filled their flower beds (surrounding the trees in the front yard) with small pieces of busted up bricks/rocks. It left like we had to dig to China to get to all of it, yet we never actually got all of it!! Finally, we said, "Let's just plant the flowers!!"

We are grateful that the previous owners left so many landscaping blocks and bricks that we were able to use those instead of having to buy new ones right now. Later we want some other type rocks around the flower beds, but that will come after we recover financially from what's already been done. Here are two of the flower beds we actually got done last weekend. What you won't see is the second pile of trash (similar to the first one) set out for heavy trash pick up. I'm sure that our garbage men LOVE us!

One of the front yard flower beds.

Ella helping with planting the flowers.

The other flower bed we finished.