I spent a fair amount of time working on the yard this weekend, and am proud to report we no longer have the white-trashiest house on the block. That's more a statement on the fact that our ratio of cars:driveway space is 1:1 and several houses in the neighborhood go much higher than that. We'll vault even higher in the rankings once the lawn has been mowed, which will take place as soon as the mower is fully charged and able to tackle the task.
Some thoughts/observations/plans for the yard:
The lawn desperately needs to be mowed, thatched and reseeded. Eventually I think I'd like to minimize the lawn in the front yard in favor of pretty plantings and such.
Previous owners of the house loved bulbs - both tulips and daffodils are plentiful. However, there seems to be neither rhyme nor reason to where they are planted. Once they've died down for the year I plan on relocating them either to along the front walkway or along the sidewalk. Right now I'm leaning towards relocating ALL of them to along the front walkway, including the ones in the planter box next to the front door, and re-purposing the planter box into an herb garden.
There is a rhododendron directly under where the power line comes into the house. The plant appears to be burnt in several locations. My powers of deduction tell me this is somehow related to the power line, so I'm contemplating turning that stretch of the yard into a rock garden. Or perhaps bricking it in and putting a bench out there. Something non plant related.
I'd like to plant a durable ground cover in the strip between the sidewalk and the street. I just need to figure out what that ground cover should be.
The yard must have been in sad looking shape when the previous owners went to put it on the market. They solved this by throwing down a weed protection sheet and throwing bark dust on top of it. Two problems with this: They didn't actually kill off the existing weeds before throwing down the sheet and some of them are surviving underneath the sheet and/or popping through gaps and holes. Second, I hate the look of bark dust - probably holdover resentment from youthful summers spent having to spread the damn stuff and the ensuing splinters and such. In the strip between the sidewalk and the street it currently covers some sad looking red lava rock.
I'm really glad Sweetie and I are planning to stay in this house for a long time, because it's going to take YEARS to get this yard into good shape.
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