The inside of the house seems to be coming along quite nicely. We've finished painting the guest bathroom, and I'll be moving on to our bedroom by next week. I've really enjoyed finding things that we like and using colors that we like to make our house a home. So far, that's been the easy part.
Now, little by little we are starting to tackle our yard. (The picture is actually one taken by the realtor in winter, so imagine everything green, and bigger!) Every time I look at it, I feel so overwhelmed. It's not that I don't want to do the work, it's just I don't even know where to start! Everything is very overgrown, and the plants have been there for years, so when you do try to pull it out of the ground, nothing comes up because the roots are buried so deep.
Jeff bought a weed-eater last weekend, so he was able to get rid of a lot of the overgrown weeds and bushes in the backyard. He was even able to take down the old swing set that the old owners were so kind to leave behind. We plan on taking it to the recycling center because the going rate for aluminum is something like 81 cents to the pound.
I've been busy trimming the rose bushes and taking a lot of the lower branches off of the trees. Some of the branches were even starting to lean out into the sidewalk and the street! I really love that job. There's something so satisfying about snipping long branches out of the way, and throwing them in a pile. It's easy to get carried away with it, and I told Jeff I could do it for hours if I were just a bit taller.
We have a couple of climbing vines that have been there for so long, thier vines look more like tree trunks. The old owners actually trained one vine to crawl up the support beam for the porch, and it's actually pushing the beam away from the house. It's a beautiful plant, but it's causing so much damage, that we have take it down. We've snipped the most that we can with the clippers, but Jeff will have to borrow his dad's chainsaw to get the rest of it.
Another worrisome object in our yard is the huge tree. It was planted very close to the house and the roots are starting to grow up under the foundation. The roots actually stretch all the way across the yard, and they are poking up through the lawn. We can't do much with it right now, but by fall we will be having it removed. Then, next year, we'll be putting sod in. I can't wait to see what our yard looks like by this time next year!
