A green thumb turned black...

I'm not going to lie. I'll admit it. I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to gardening. I just sort of apply my cooking philosophy to the yard - "let's throw it all together and see if it tastes good."

Well apparently that doesn't really work with living foliage. (Sometimes it doesn't work with food either but that's another blog...)

In a matter of 4 months we have managed to KILL everything in the yard. Maybe it was the weeks of neglect as we worked so diligently on the inside of the house; we ended up really neglecting the outside of the house. Just take a look... here's the house in August when we bought it...

And here it is yesterday...

Just looks so sad doesn't it!

The grass has totally died. We've tried raking it up and watering it but so far nothing is really sprouting.

We hired a gardner to come "trim" the bushes - well he ended up cutting everything down to little nubs - and ripped out some of the stuff that was actually living. At the time we were so happy that it was at least under control - but I think he ended up killing alot of what we really loved about the yard.

We had that dead tree removed so it wouldn't fall on the house - but that 30 ton crane ended up cracking our driveway and putting some pretty big holes in our stone walkway to the front door.

The owner before us had so many flower beds - I just can't keep up. When I finish weeding one garden it's time to start on another. This one at the front of the house used to be beautiful flowers - now it's just weeds.

And a problem as of late - the paint is peeling off the bricks - in sheets! It's barely hanging on. You can peel it with your fingers. Behind the beige is a really bright pink and some white - which I can only guess is some sort of primer.

I just hope the neighbors don't turn on us before we even get to meet all of them!!