My little man NEVER was that little to begin with, but boy has he grown these past 3 months!
His cheeks are all filled out and just chewy,
Lilac bushes,
a fresh coat of paint,
This picture gives you an idea of the general condition of the yard before Dad arrived... it wasn't pretty. There's a show on HGTV called "Property Virgins" that I sometimes watch. Not that I bookmark the show as a favorite, but it happens to be on when I am ready to unwind. Well Jonathan and I were what you might call "acreage virgins." We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into when we bought this house and the 3 acres that accompany it. We have a very large green belt in the front of our house that is surrounded by heavy woods. In fact the entire perimeter of the house is heavily wooded, outside of the landscaped areas. This makes for a lot of leaves come fall. And if you're too slow to get to them, and the snow comes, then you're stuck with waiting until the thaw to clean the mess up. That's essentially what happened to us. We're a little wiser now... Since these pics were taken we have cleaned up all of the flower beds except one small one near the driveway. It's a tiring and slow process...
We've also decided to address the problem of curb appeal with our home. There are no immediate plans to move, but we agreed the house was lacking nonetheless, and why wait to improve it until somebody else will be the benefactor? My rationale is, if it's got to be done, the sooner the better so we can enjoy it as well. First off, we tackled the job of painting the house. I say we, but really this was a job for Dad, with Jonathan as the eager apprentice. It was a HUGE job. Dad has plenty of experience painting houses, but hasn't done a job our size in a long time. Because the previous color was so dark, it took several coats of paint to get a uniform color. The paint required was 2.5x what we originally estimated, totalling 23 gallons! Yikes, that's A LOT of work. We're SOO SOO thankful for Dad's know-how in getting us going. While he was here, 3 sides of the house were completed, and Jonathan finished the final side on his own the following weekend. His work was rewarded handsomely with a wide assortment of home improvement necessities. He got a new ladder, wheelbarrow, backpack sprayer, pruners, etc. and I get a cleaned up yard and a fresh-faced home! There still remains quite a bit of work in our curb appeal makeover, but we're well on our way and much better informed thanks to Dad.
like the poor birch tree that used to be a focal point of the front yard. It had succumbed to a nasty little pest that bore into its trunk and deprived the limbs of water and nutrients. It was dead as a door knob...so it had to go. THANK YOU DAD---for lending a landscaping hand and helping us cut down and remove our dearly departed friend.
Jonny made us some delicious shish kebobs on the grill and we enjoyed a rare lazy Sunday afternoon.
