Hello Spring!

Well hello there on this beautiful first day of Spring!!!

I can’t wait to walk out to this view in a couple months! (Ignore the weeds in the cracks, please and thank you!)

The weather is finally going to be warming up (again!) and so I’m going to be spending the afternoon outside getting started on the outside spring cleaning and planning. It took a couple years but last year it finally clicked that a good fall clean up means less work in the spring so lucky for me it’s not too much, which leaves more time to start on some bigger tasks. Here’s a rundown of what’s to come outside in the next couple months.

We never figured out why someone made a window well here. The entire window is about 8 inches above ground level. I think they had extra cinderblocks they didn’t know what to do with.

First, trimming and cutting down some trees! There’s a bit of trimming that needs to be done all over, but the priority is cutting down this cherry tree that grew in the window well behind the garage. This things is like a dozen years old at least. We completely cut it back a couple years ago, but couldn’t finish the job with the pole saw we had and kind of forgot about it because we don’t go back there often. Outta sight, outta mind. Until it’s not. If it were a wanted tree, it would be beautiful, but it’s 6 inches from the building so it can’t stay. We realized too late last year how big it had gotten again but by that time birds were nesting in it and I didn’t want to be a homewrecker. This year, thanks to the new chainsaw and some stump remover, it’s coming out for good before the birds make a home!

Not as pretty as the other sides of the house, complete with a fallen shutter. That tree on the left will also be coming out this summer, it is way to big for the space and shouldn’t have been planted there.

Next, I’ll be tearing out some old bushes in the front of the house and planning the front garden. When we moved in, it was completely neglected with a couple sad bushes and had almost completely grassed over. Some of the dying bushes are gone already, and last year a re-homed a beautiful butterfly bush that was planted in the wrong spot, but this year I’m taking the time to fully plan and plant low maintenance flowering landscaping. The area is much larger than the side garden I completed last year, so we’re going to use some bigger flowering bushes and maybe some evergreen bushes to give the area depth and interest.

This is from last summer before I started clearing everything out. Most of it has been pulled or died off, but a few larger trees are left, that I might replant elsewhere on the property.

And the last task is going to be taking out the bushes and trees that have grown in around the pond. For the first couple years we lived here, we had landscapers cutting the lawn and they would take care of the various trees and bushes before they took root around the pond. We kept up with it the first year we got the mower, but then I wanted to see how the area would fill in itself. The first year the long grasses grew in nicely, but then last year they were overtaken a bit by thorny bushes and it got out of control. I started to remove a lot of the mess last year so need to finish the job last year and plant some things with more intention. I might actually have a landscaper some give some ideas for how to best showcase the pond, but that’s a whole other task and a whole other post.

I hope all of you get some fabulous spring weather today and can get your hands dirty!