Originally posted at twentysixcats.com

I have a feeling that our yard looked awesome when the original owner lived in the house. Then she sold it in 2006 and it became a rental property. Thus began the next 4 years of nothing being done to the yard, except the grass being cut.

(Unrelated side note: Shortly after we moved in, a man rang the doorbell. He was with the mortgage company of the previous owner. He said that he was investigating, because apparently the previous owners did not disclose that the property was a rental. I thought that was interesting.)

As the weather has gotten warmer, I have desires and hopes for our yard. I want to make it a nice place to be – right now I spend as little time there as possible. Our yard is more weeds than grass. There is poison ivy and poison oak all along the fence in our backyard. There are lots of mosquitoes flying around – bug spray is essential when working outside. The yard is so unkempt and overgrown, but I have no idea how to start to fix it. I don’t know the first thing about plants. I’d *love* to pay someone to come, work their magic, and then teach me how to maintain it, but I know that would cost money that is better spent elsewhere.

There are some bushes along the house and along the street that were in desperate need of trimming. So today, I bought some hedge clippers and hacked away. I hope in my ignorance I didn’t do TOO much damage! They look much better, but not perfect. There were three bushes along the side of the house that I cut down to the stumps. I am excited because I think it looks a lot better.

I started raking up all the magnolia leaves in our side yard, but quit out of weariness. There are so many! They haven’t been raked up in years. I have visions in my head, but it takes so much work getting there. Hopefully day by day, I’ll be able to tackle things and get all the leaves raked up, bushes trimmed, weeds pulled, and maybe return the yard to its previous landscaped beauty. It doesn’t need to be this summer… I keep telling myself. :-)

When it is winter again and the weeds die down, we’ll tackle the backyard. There is a HUGE pile of sticks that need to be removed, as well as a bunch of junk and trash that the previous residents left. And of course there is the issue of the poison ivy. I think we’ll focus on the front yard this summer and the backyard in the winter.

In other house-related news, we are getting carpet installed in our den/playroom on Monday! I am so excited. I will take pictures and post them when it is installed. :-)