Curb Appeal

When we moved in to our house in June, the yard was a blank slate. Well, not really a blank slate, more of an overgrown, unplanned, unloved jungle. Our house is on 5 acres, which is fenced off to make three separate paddocks, and about one and a half acres in the middle where our house sits. Around the house, there were only three sad and anemic looking palm trees around the pool, all in desperate need of a good trimming and a boat load of fertilizer.

Christmas Palm tree by pool

This is what a Christmas Palm should  look like…

Christmas Palm

Yeah, it was a little sad. Don’t worry, we cleaned it up and fertilized it.

Other than that, there wasn’t a single bit of landscaping done. The previous owners had lived in the house since ’99, more than enough time to plant a bush or two.

Our blank slate

Notice above, that there weren’t any gutters on the house. When it rained, the entire front porch would flood with two inches of water!

Having nothing planted saved us from having to pull everything out, and given the state of their palm trees, we would have had to. The two paddocks in the front were almost covered with palm trees, pine trees, and oak trees. When we first moved in, we had a tree company come in to cut down over twenty dead pine trees, and clear out the years of overgrowth that had taken over the yard.

A few Before pics…

Before – lots of dead pine trees

Hungry tree – before

Side yard – before

We couldn’t afford for them to clear it all out (it’s crazy expensive!), but they made quite a dent in it. In the course of six hours, it went from looking like an abandoned house to a house with some potential.

Side yard – after

Hungry tree – after

Front yard – after

We still have to clear out the entire right side of the house, it’s still a mess!

In the past few months, we’ve done a little landscaping in the area by the entrance to the house.

Front garden

Since we’ve put in the garden, we seem to have a lot more lizards and such visiting us… I love the long legs on this Jesus lizard!

Baby Jesus Lizard

We still have so far to go with the landscaping. We have planted a bunch of little fruit trees on one side of the house, and other than trim back the palm trees around the pool and fertilize them, we haven’t done anything to the back yard. Or the side of the house that you see when you drive up to the house either. It’s going to take a lot of time, but in the meanwhile, I’ll be collecting pins of what I want it to look like…

http://pinterest.com/pin/336565924/

http://pinterest.com/pin/307496768/

http://pinterest.com/pin/307329325/