Placating HOA / Improving Resale

Well, it's Saturday morning March 24. A Happy Birthday to my Father. I'm home alone and just took a couple pictures of our new yard for the blog. Emily's working today, and I have a spring league ultimate game to attend in about an hour.

This past Thursday I worked a few hours early in the morning from home and then woke Emily up for a one day renovation of our yard. The plan was to some how accentuate the grass that could grow, and get rid of the rest of the sorry attempt at 'grass' that didn't get enough sun to grow. Our house faces north , there is a big hill with pine trees behind it, and we have a giant Bradford Pear in the front yard that I can't wait to eradicate. All of this leads to a very shady front yard. Other than the grass situation, we put in a couple new azaleas and a fresh layer of ground cover using rocks, mulch, and pine straw. Still to come is another ring of the rock wall around the mailbox, some hostas and possibly a flower or two.

So, to keep the story as short as I can... Emily and I started clearing up all the old leaves and pine needles in the yard. Our friend John came over (with his truck, wink-wink) after a morning interview with a mortgage agency in Buckhead. We had lunch together at the house, after which we all left in said truck went to WalMart and bought mulch bags totaling 22 cubic yards, and a couple bails of pine straw. This filled the truck bed, so we dropped it off at the house, then drove to Earth Products to buy rock at about 14 cents a pound (yes, that does get expensive). Returning with the rock, we finished cleaning off the ground and we dug holes for the bushes. John got a shower and returned to the company he was interviewing with for a second round. I did some minor earth shifting while Emily began situating rocks. John returned with a new job and once again changed out of his suit and into jeans. After his return and good news, we quickly started seeing things come together.



The shrubs were planted and fertilized, the rocks were laid out two or three different ways until everyone thought it looked right. They were then finessed into the dirt at the appropriate height, and mulch was applied liberally until everything looked right. We had a spaghetti dinner and called it a night. I will end the post with a thank you to John.