Home Improvements | Fuzzy Undertones

The above picture is of our back yard, and it was taken about a month ago. The flower bed areas were a mess, there was chain-link fence against the house, random metal and wood poles sticking up from the ground, and general crappiness.

This was taken after our house was painted. The front looked great (see pictures from previous post), but the back still needed work. I trimmed the rose bushes and got rid of all the dead branches, but we still had a way to go.

Finally, last weekend, Chris’ teacher friends built our new deck! It is awesome!!! It is made out of composite material, but the deck actually looks more like wood than fake stuff. There’s a built-in bench in the corner, and we’ll probably put a custom-built table over the heat pump to hide it and have a useable surface. Also, we got rid of the weedy flower beds, random metal structures, and have room for our potted plants. We’re going to install landscaping around the deck starting at the end of the stairs (where the potted bush is), wrapping around to the house (where the rose bushes are). We’ll also put in some paving stones for a walkway, and we’re going to build a fire pit about where I stood to take the picture. Pretty sweet, huh?

Ahhhh, the married life. It seems like it’s pretty much the same as the single life, with one major exception. Ok, two major exceptions. One of them I’ll not discuss today (dating anyone other than Chris is behind me, and Chris and I are still dating anyway), and the other is this: I suddenly want to do yard work. WTF is up with that???

We’ve got a lot of home improvement projects on deck (heh heh) this summer, including building a deck. We already painted the house, from a grayish-green rainy overcast color to a bright and sunny (a.k.a. “butter tart”) yellow. It is very yellow! There were two other “yellow” houses on our street, but after we painted our house, I don’t think they can call themselves yellow any longer. All other yellows must bow down before us!!! We also had our front porch and side porch (with the hot tub) stained a nice redwood color, which goes very nicely with the shutters and bricks.

This is the BEFORE picture. Sorry the picture kind of sucks – I was using the wrong setting on my camera, it got over-exposed, and I wasn’t able to do much to fix it in photoshop. But you get the idea. Sad color, weeds galore, boo-hoo.

This is the AFTER picture! Sunny! Yellow! landscaping under control! Flowers on the porch!!! We’ll be posting pictures of the back yard after we get the deck in. It will be an even more dramatic makeover! And you will be jealous of our awesome back yard!

So, along with the painting, I definitely wanted to clean up the yard. I bought lots of flowers (hanging basket, pots, long rectangle planters, and even a strawberry pot that I learned how to plant by watching a you-tube video) and repotted my old plants that were in desperate need of attention. There are three rose bushes in the back yard and I took out the waist-high grass and weeds surrounding them, trimmed the hell out of all their dead branches, and got rid of the aphids. I lopped off more of the butterfly bush, which thought it was going to be the boss of me, but it was wrong. I weeded the tall grass from the front yard, and chopped off the dead hydrangea branches. Everything is starting to grow back – the roses are much improved, and you can tell we have bulbs in the front. About a week ago we bought a weed-whacker – I started on the side of the front yard, but that will be a major task. But I think I’ve got it under control so far!

This is the strawberry pot that was abandoned by the previous home-owners. I emptied it out, watched a you-tube video, then Chris and I planted it with all sorts of herbs and flowers. We even put a PVC watering tube down the middle of it. It looks even better now because it has purple, blue, and yellow flowers blooming from the different plants oozing out of the openings.

Today, I decided not to go to work so that Chris and I could hang out (he leaves for nearly 2 weeks on Friday to go on tour with the Army band). We went to Home Depot and bought a few gardening tools, and scoped out some pavers for below the stairs of our impending deck. The deck is going to be suuuhh-weeeeeettt!!! Built-in benches, then stairs that will eventually lead out to a fire pit in the back yard. We’re going to landscape around the back of the deck to hide the septic tank covers, too. After Home Depot, I bought some blackberry bush herbicide, planted (almost all) the rest of the flowers that need a home, and glared at the surviving weeds in the front yard. Someday, my pretties, you will be mine!

All this domesticity is freaking me out. I’m going to go to work tomorrow and talk about fish.