Front Yard Landscaping Progress

Get ready to bust out your high fives because I have front yard landscaping progress to report.

In fact, I’d say we are 80% done with the front yard landscaping.

Give or take a few percentage points.

In fact, let’s not get bogged down in numbers.

Let’s celebrate the fact that front yard landscaping progress has been made.

Hallelujah.

(If you need a refresher on the landscaping plan, you can read about it here or I’ll just catch you up in this post.)

I don’t have a true before picture, but here is more or less how our front yard started out:

Now this same view looks like this:

Much better, right?

We have reclaimed and reshaped the flower beds.

I spread out almost 10 yards of mulch in this area by myself!

I’ve read that women are hesitant to publicly say they are proud of their accomplishments. Not me, not in this instance. Consider this my shout from the rooftops that I am very proud that I did this by myself.

I didn’t even whine about it much.

Handy Husband was incredibly ill when the mulch was delivered. It was actually scary for a day or two. We think he was bit by a tick, but with a round of antibiotics he’s back to normal.

I tackled this project on my own because it had to be done just so we could reclaim our driveway from the huge mulch mountain and we didn’t know when Handy Husband would be up to the task.

Tick bites are no joke. I knew Handy Husband was on the mend (i.e. the antibiotics kicked in) when he woke up one morning with his energy restored and the motivation to pressure wash the sidewalks. That alone made such a difference in how fresh and clean our front yard looked.

We have four, maybe five, things left to do with this front yard landscaping project.

We still have one birch tree that needs to come down because it is leaning on the power line coming into the house. The good news is we finally have a solid plan that should prevent the tree from falling in the street when we do cut it down. We are just waiting on motivation to tackle that project.

Motivation is 90% of any DIY endeavor.

Until we do cut the tree down, I’m not planting any new plants. This is mainly so I can stall on making any plant-related decisions. I’d hate to go through the trauma of making a plant decision and then have the plant destroyed by a falling tree.

You know that would happen to me.

If any plants are going to be destroyed around here it’s going to be via the proper way – neglect.

The addition of future plants will also help camouflage the fake rock we bought to cover our well head. The fake rock looks REALLY fake against the other stones in our yard, but at least it is better than the green milk can cover.

Or maybe I’ll paint the rock to look less fake. I don’t know yet. I do know I’m ignoring the problem for now.

We also need to break up the part of the sidewalk by our front gate that is out of kilter due to some large tree roots.

The plan is to replace the part of the sidewalk we remove with a stone path.

No one, not even the mailman, uses this part of the sidewalk. I’m just waiting for Handy Husband to show me how to use the hammer drill and then I think I can tackle breaking up a concrete sidewalk myself.

Maybe.

Although, I’d really rather not.

It sounds like a good way for my arms to turn to jello from all the vibration.

No one wants jello arms.

We also need to finish the path from the new flowerbeds to the front of the sunporch. This project will require some heavy lifting.

Clearly, that’s why I volunteered my muscles for the job.

We do have the stones to use for this project. They are hiding under our deck.

Don’t ask me why.

It’s just one of the mysteries of this house.

The stone paths that cut through the flower beds in these photos are added where I’ve observed we naturally walk or take shortcuts to and from the house.

However, none of the stone paths we’ve laid so far are permanent until we’ve finished arranging the stone for the rest of the paths. It’s a bit like a puzzle piece to figure out which stones will work where.

Do you know what else I’ve figured out?

This was a really long way of telling you that we are 80% done with the front yard landscaping.

Aren’t you happy I did, though?

P.S. This is the fake rock we ordered from Amazon, but it came delivered from Home Depot. So, now, Home Depot is selling on Amazon? All my worlds are colliding. One time I ordered pickles on Amazon and they came in a Walmart box.

P.P.S. I just thought of one more thing we have to do. We need to repaint the front porch where we lowered the flowerbed levels. Also, the pressure washing removed some of the porch paint. Oops.

Now tell me what you are proud of lately! I’d love to hear! While you’re thinking on that, here are some other blog posts I think you’ll enjoy. 

Our Front Yard Landscaping Plan

Multi Tasking Fail and a Rope Planter

The Tale of 3 Houseplants

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