It's That Time Of The Year Again! Part 1

No, I don't mean tax time. It's time to start pulling up all the weeds and sowing the seeds and watch them grow. Working in the garden is one of my favorite things to do at this time of the year. 

When Justin asked me on Monday morning if I wanted to take little D to daycare on a day when he usually stays home with me, I was like, yeah! I made a mental list of everything I wanted to accomplish and it was a long one. 

According to the weather forecast there is going to be rain this week. Since it was sunny out, I decided to get the outdoor stuff done then I can work indoors when the rain comes later in the week. I trimmed one of the trees in front of our house and pulled out a bunch of weeds in an effort to clean up the sidewalk in front of our house. The day flew by, after the yard work, I barely had time to paint some book shelves before it was time to pick up the little guy up from daycare. 

I came home one day to discover that the tree I requested from Urban Releaf was finally planted in front of my house after almost a year of back and forth communication! The tree they gave me was not the one I requested nor the one they said they were going to plant for me. It's called an Evergreen Pear. I was so happy I made a small donation to the program as a gesture of appreciation.

The tree planters made kind of a mess with loose dirt scattered everywhere and you know who loves loose dirt? That's right, all the kitties in the neighborhood found their new litter box. 

I put down the landscaping fabric around the tree and dumped a bunch of mulch on top...ahh, much neater. 

This was how our house and its surroundings looked when we went to the open house. Notice all the random shrubs in the parking strip. I find shrubs that are trimmed into boxy shapes incredibly unnatural looking, not a fan. 

This is the most current picture of how things look now. There are still a lot more work to do, but it's definitely an improvement.

This part of the sidewalk needs a lot of help and the overgrown weeds certainly don't help. I don't know what happened to this part of the sidewalk that caused it to break up into such a weird shape.

I decided to keep the little green stuff on the right because I like the way the leaves look.

The is the perfect spot for the broken up dirt/concrete the guys who built the gates left in our yard. 

I put down a layer of landscape fabric and mulch to keep those pesky weeds from coming back after I planted this little guy. The tiny green thing in the middle is supposed to grow to couple of feet wide when it matures and it's an everygreen with purple flowers in the summer.