1/3 Of The Way There!

Hey, heyyy blog buddies! I hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July, and hopefully a four day weekend off from work. ;) 

I have been dying to share a project with you guys, and it's actually not even complete. We are maybe 1/3 of the way there, but it's just so pretty I couldn't help it. Like many of the other outdoor projects we've taken on, my parents helped BIG TIME with this one. Let's just say, they know how to clear out an overgrown jungle like it's nobody's business. We first learned of their capabilities when we bought the house...eeek!

This time we aimed those awesome taming skills at our unkempt jungle surrounding our corner lot.  I forgot to take "before" pictures of all the whole jungle, so I here are a few of the untouched areas.  Just imagine this surrounding our whole property.

We knew our property line was somewhere in the the middle of that whole mess...we just didn't know how much of it was ours.  We could never find the middle marker, but we finally came across it on my parent's last visit.  And it turns out, most of this hilly disaster was ours.  Yay...we had more land than we thought, but holy moly, did we have our work cut out for us. :-/

Thankfully, my parents have more energy than any twenty-something I know, and they tackled that hill and all the poison ivy it could offer up!  After a few days, we could see dirt...and a couple cute rock walls, and some ivy ground cover.

And would they stop there?!  Of course not!  We decided this would be a good idea...

Holy mulch pile!!  The next morning, we spent the first half of the day spreading this over the newly cleared areas.  The difference fresh mulch makes is amazing...plus, we are hoping it'll keep some of those weeds from popping back up at full speed.

We still have a heck of a ways to go, but the difference in our yard from where we started is incredible!  And the amazing memories we have of transforming our home with our family can't be beat. :)

Anyone else take on a unruly landscape lately?!

Planting Party!

What did we do last Saturday night after showing our neighbors some love??  Shower, re-energize with a Diner dinner and hunt down the perfect plants to spruce up our em-BARE-assing yard at Home Depot, of course.

Thanks to some smart thinking by my mom, we took a couple minutes to map out our beds on paper before we left the house.  We took note of how many, what size and what type of plants we'd need to purchase.  This step was super helpful, and totally eliminated some clueless wandering that definitely would have taken place.

Luckily for us, HD had an awesome selection of plants, at the perfect prices.  Before I knew it, the sun had set, the workers were desperately trying to close the lawn section of the store and we were trying to check out with two, fully loaded carts.

{Hubby with our carts...}

Once we paid, it was on to renting a Home Depot truck.  Thank gosh for those rentals because there was noooo way we were fitting two trees, multiple bushes, a pitchfork {for our future mulch delivery} and a bunch of mountain pinks into either one of our cars.

{Hubby and Papa Dukes locking up our precious cargo...}

With only a couple minor heart attacks {trees falling over, told you they wouldn't stay standing...the bed popping open....our scotch broom bush almost flying out the back...eeeek}, we made it home safe and sound.

The next morning it was time to set all the plants where we wanted them to go.  Plotting everything out before we started digging any holes ensured that we didn't make any mistakes with placement. 

{Hubby and Mom hard at work.}

Before we could get it just right, a poorly placed plant needed to be removed.  Lucky for us, our neighbors were more than happy to help out on Sunday after we painted their house on Saturday.

{Our neighbor easily ripping our sad looking rhododendron out of the ground.}

Since we semi-planned before we even went to Home Depot, it didn't take too long to figure out the perfect layout.

{Bed to the left of the front door...}

{Bed to the right of the front door...}

{Small section of the bed to the left of our front door.  A few tulips and hyacinths growing wildly in our backyard also got transplanted here.}

{Bed along the back of the driveway...}

{Bed along the front of the driveway.  See how much needed to be weeded out of there!!  And we already cleared this bed out a couple months ago.  I can tell we'll be battling this one for years to come...}

Once the layout was taken care of...it was time to start digging!  Well, the strong hubby's started digging. ;)

{Pete planting one of two white azaleas given to us by his mom.} 

My neighbor and I began weeding the AWFUL bed that runs along the driveway.  Thankfully, it wasn't long before the plants were in, watered and the boys were joining us to help clear out the huge "nightmare" bed.

After a couple hours of hard work, our yard was finally starting to show some life.

And don't worry...I know that our beds still look very unfinished.  But never fear!  We had a friend who does landscaping, drop off 8 yards of mulch...and the boys got busy spreading it this past weekend. 

After we get an additional 4 yards {12 yards in total}, we'll finally have our place fully mulched!

 {First 4 yard delivery in the driveway...}

BTW, I was hoping to have some fun pictures, and possibly videos of some major tree work on our property from today, but that plan has been put on hold.  The nor'easter that brought torrential rains to the East Coast yesterday caused our tree people to reschedule for Friday.  Fingers crossed that I'll have some fun updates from that work for you guys by early next week!