Mary, Mary, quite contrary...

While the yard in the back of the house is slightly neglected... (slightly? Hmm... maybe more than slightly....) There is one section that's growing nicely. Our vegetable garden! We transplanted the pots into the ground a few weeks ago and we're finally seeing some results. The herbs are doing well, with the exception of the cilantro. I let it grow waaaaay too big apparently. But I cut it down to the roots and we'll see if it does any better. I had no idea you were supposed to cut cilantro back weekly. Did you?

Oh and uh... the garden sort of looks like a shallow grave... whatever..

Anyhoo! We actually have a teeny tiny tomato, and two very VERY small blackberries.

Grow baby GROW!

Git R done...

The yard demo is WELL underway. Dave is a ripping-up-digging-out-cut-it-back fiend!!

(Insert deep man cackle here.)

We took out the box hedges in the front, and all the dead or dying plans that were in those flower beds. We only left one lily plant - make that one HUGE lily plant - in the front right corner. I think it anchors the yard nicely.... and it was the only one left that blooms beautiful flowers. So we thought, leave well enough alone! It can greet our guests that pull in the driveway. I think losing those hedges really opens up the yard, where as before they sort of cut off the yard from the rest of the house.

Here is a shot of what it looked like when we moved in. LOTS of small bushes. I'm getting the arm shakes just thinking about all that hedge trimming...

Here's a shot mid-rip. But you can see what we attempted in trying to maintain the garden. It still wasn't really working...

So out it goes!!! Post destruction photo below. The plan now is to till and sod the yard so we can get some green grass that's nice and easy to mow.

Of course this process took Dave about 2 weeks, on and off. Most of the plants he was able to dig out with a shovel, but 4 of them required some horsepower in addition to Dave power. That's right. He drove his truck up onto the yard and hooked a chain to the bush, the other end to his bumper and then gunned it.

(I assure you, we are the reddest people on our block.)

Too bad I didn't get a picture, but you can imagine, I'm sure. It wasn't pretty, and lots of people came out of their houses to stare, but the gardens are now gone!

We put the debris on the curb and it was gone before the sun even set. So I guess maybe some of those people staring were actually window shopping?? I have a feeling my box hedges will be migrating down the street this spring.

The only contribution I had was attacking the mammoth azaleas that sit in front of the windows. They are WAY too big and were starting to get very leggy (is that the right word?) at the bottom. So I started to whack them way back, but I ran out of arm muscle after only a few minutes. So the front of the house now looks like a "before and after" picture. Great for the blog! Bad in real life... :( Ehh. I'll get to it eventually.

BEFORE (waaay before, but a before nonetheless. Note the Christmas wreath on the door)

and AFTER.

And the half finished bushes. I'll get to it, I'll get to it! Geez!