Spring Is In The Air!

Like most people around the country, we enjoyed a very mild winter this year.  There was not much snow to speak of, unless you count that terrible October storm.  And although spring officially arrives tomorrow, I feel like we have been enjoying spring since the beginning of March.  Instead of "Coming in like a lion..." March brought us lots of mild temperatures and beautiful sunshine.  {The end of this week may even bring a record-breaking 80 degree day!} 

All of this uhhhhhhhhh-mazing weather is giving us a sneak peak at what may bloom in our yard this year.  We are anxious to see what will appear on our almost-half-an-acre since this is what the yard looked like when we bought our house.  {Yikes!}

Even though our yard {especially the back yard} is still a complete hot mess, at least we have a whole lot of daffodils popping up everywhere!!  Who needs grass when you have flowers randomly appearing in your dirt patches, right?!?!?!  {Yup, those are tiny hot pink arrows pointing everything out.}

In keeping with all things spring and the great outdoors, I'll fill you guys in on an appointment that the hubby and I had with a tree company this weekend.  We have a bagillion oak trees on our property, and most of them are planted close to each other, or close to our house.  We are hoping to selectively remove some of these trees over the years for the safety of our house, as well as the health of the trees and our lawn.

From the tree people {I'm so technical}, we learned that our town has restrictions regarding cutting down trees.  You can only cut down one healthy tree a year, unless you want to replant another tree in it's place.  So long story short, we are going to have twenty {yea, that's right...2-0} trees safety pruned, one large oak removed {it's next to our house and lifting the sidewalk...who knows what the roots are doing to the foundation of our house}, the dead cherry tree removed {it's the one with the birdhouse, front and center in the first picture above}, the hemlock you see below removed and a bunch of stumps ground down that we couldn't manually remove while we de-jungle-ified our house.

Unfortunately, the cherry died because it became infested with insects.  The tree person said that it's common because of it's sweet sap, and clearly, no one was tending to the property to save it.  The hemlock needs to come down because it's growing into the oak tree right behind it, and it's also stealing sunlight from my precious magnolia to it's left.  As if those two things weren't reason enough, we were informed it's $210 a year to treat that tree and keep it healthy.  Ummm, no thank you.  We aren't paying all that money to keep a tree that will kill two others.  {Luckily, the hemlock isn't big enough to count towards our healthy tree count, so we are okay to take it down for those of you keeping track.}

Welp...that is our tree saga.  Even though this is going to be a CRAZY expensive endeavor, it's totally worth it.  Our poor property has not been taken care of in years, and we really can't afford to have any huge branches come down on our brand new roof or break one of our brand new windows.

Anyone else have a super expensive home cost pop up lately?!?!

PS-I linked up to Thrifty Decor Chick's "Show Us Your Kitchens" linky party so I could show off our retro renovation in all it's glory. :)