Our yards

Naturally, one of the biggest differences between renting an apartment and owning a house is maintaining the lawn and landscaping. My true guess is that people do this jsut so they don't irk their neighbors, not because they love doing it. Here's something else about renting an apartment: you don't own a lawnmower. We knew one of our first major purchases would be a lawnmower and a weedwhacker so that Nick could perform his husbandly duties of mowing the lawn and maintaining the trim. Of course, I would do this if need be. However, the lawn has been mowed three times since we closed, and I have yet to be the mower :)

We browsed Craigslist and the websites of Home Depot and Lowe's looking for a deal. Mowers are not cheap. By a stroke of luck, I won a Smartypants Quiz on The Pioneer Woman's website shortly before our closing and the prize was a $500 giftcard to Amazon.com. It's true, all of my years in school are finally paying off. Anyhow, instead of loading up on books as I perhaps would have done in normal circumstances, I decided to be responsible and buy a few things that we needed. I think with that $500 I managed to buy a few baking supplies for my dear sister (who participates in Smartypants Quizzes with me regularly), a new camera for myself (the cheapest one they sold with free shipping), a lawnmower, a meat tenderizer, a potato masher, and a microwave. Ok, so I had to pay $5.50 of my own money for the microwave, but I'm pleased with how I stretched the money.

So, after I won the giftcard, we started scouting out lawnmowers on amazon. They have a huge selection. However, since I'm a cheapskate, we looked at the cheapest ones, read lots of reviews, and settled on a Black and Decker electric mower. Yes, electric. As in it plugs into an outlet while you mow. This has many advantages and only one disadvantage. Advantages: better for the environment than a gas guzzler, it's quieter, and it has an on/off switch instead of a cord you yank until your arm comes off. Disadvantages: the "cord dance", but Nick says it's not so bad.

Hard at work. You know we're new homeowners when I insist on taking pictures the first time he does yardwork.

We also bought an electric weedwhacker, but this one we just picked up at Lowe's. Nick found one he liked and it was on sale.
Safety first! Goggles are a must when it's time to weedwhack.Here's Nick with the Grasshog, another Black & Decker product. Hmmm, grasshog sounds like groundhog. Don't get too close to the shed so the groundhogs don't nibble your toes!Here are all three groundhogs. Pablo (Pabla?) is on the left side, and the two babies, Pepito and Pepita, are on the far right. One is standing up. They are very cute. Also, this photo was taken at least two weeks ago before we ever mowed, and the babies are quite a bit bigger now. I see them lumbering around the yard eating our grass almost daily as I sit at my desk and work. Sigh. I've got to find a humane way to get rid of them.

On to our yards. Here's a photo of the backyard taken at the final walk through.
Fortunately, the big brown patch quickly turned green. However, it is still a problem that we'll probably try to rectify next spring. We'll need to replant grass seed, something more durable than what they filled in the pool hole with.

The backyard is lined with evergreens. However, I don't know what kind they are. This is me being lazy and not trying to figure it out. The trees are significantly taller on the east side of the yard, but there is still a lot of privacy here.
In this photo, you can see the one exception to the evergreen rule. Past Nick, where there's a slight break in the trees is a holly bush. Pretty!

On to the front and the side yards. We are lucky that some former owners of the house took a lot of care in landscaping the property. We have a wide variety of plants all over the place. It seems that the last owners did not maintain it terribly well. I got my hands dirty last Sunday after we took Drew to the airport. Nick mowed and I started weeding the front yard and clipping the bushes that were blocking our walkways.

But first, a few detail shots of things that can be found in our yard.

We have a few of this kind of bush in our yard. I wish I knew what it was! Here's a detail shot of those pink flowers at the top:Lovely.

We have some yellow lilies in the large bed up near the house. This morning a few reddish ones popped up too.

This bed, although nice enough, needs some work. I need to consult with my two landscaping/gardening experts (my brother-in-law Eric and my aunt Ann) about what's good, what's bad, and what should be done.
This is a small bed in our side yard. You can see the backyard fence right next to it. Just some small purple flowers.

Also growing rampantly around our house are wild strawberries. They are EVERYWHERE. In the beds, under bushes, and even just growing in the grass. Here, for example:

A tight detail shot. They are quite small, but keep in mind that Nick mowed just a couple of days before I took these photos.

Here's another:
There's a nice, tall yellow shrub up against our chimney with strawberries growing right below and next to it.

We have some really beautiful mature trees in the front yard. Here's our Japanese Maple:
Hmm. This angle is a bit wonky. It's taken from the front stoop. It looks much better from the street.

Here's our Japanese dogwood. It's still blooming, but I think it's on its way out.
Much prettier on a sunny day.

Evidence of my weeding and trimming on Sunday:
I need to behave myself and get these bagged up, but there's no time! It will have to wait until Sunday. Here you can also see our window box. It has a few growing things in it, but really needs to be replanted.

My project that took the longest on Sunday was clearing our sidewalk. We have this lovely winding pathway from the sidewalk to the front door that had become largely unusable because of the overgrowth. I went crazy with the hedgeclippers. It was my first time doing anything of the sort, but I think I did ok:

Lovely evergreen bushes line the way, and there are several up against the house. I think they're juniper, but I'm no expert.

A view up towards the house with our cleared sidewalk:

You can see our magnolia tree in this photo, the tallest tree on the right. It bloomed in late March and early April, these huge, gorgeous white blooms.

And a view from the front stoop towards the street. Lots of privacy:
I love having a yard and feel very fortunate that we found a house in our price range with so much backyard space and such a gorgeous front yard. We'll have to work hard to maintain it, but neither of us is a stranger to hard work. There's more to be done, like always, but it's something that doesn't feel too much like drudgery at this point.