New House, New Yard, Now to decorate!

We are still neck deep in boxes so don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to change it all at once. However with 7o degree days spring is here and the itch to make the yard look great has certainly hit. This house sits on about 2 acres of land. Most of it is a big open field in the front with just a few trees. I know we are not helping our yard appeal by already having a trampoline up in front of the house but the backyard needs a lot of work and frankly I am not sure it would even fit nicely in the back.

I want to make the yard beautiful and inviting and a sanctuary but I am just not sure yet how. I have been checking out sites like pinterest and YardEnvy.com and there are so many possibilities. While we are only renting this place it is our home for now and might well be for years to come. If nothing else we want to leave it in better shape than we have found it. That means a lot of yard work and care inside and out.

  What do I do with a broken inground pool even?

In the back yard is an inground pool. You might think this is wonderful but really it is a disaster! It is old, the foundation is crumbling and the liner has pulled away from it. It is half full of yucky green water and huge tad poles who are thankfully eating the mosquito larva for us. We are renting and as the land lord does not yet know what he wants to do with it we simply fenced it off to keep our little ones out of it and safe from it. (It would need a fence around it even if it wasn’t a green mess!) So why not just drain it? I asked the landlord about this but he said it must stay half full or it will collapse and I guess that would be bad as unstable ground might harm the house! Aqueous Pools seems to agree with the landlord. So I can’t do all that much about the yard appeal of the back of the house where the pool is concerned.

    So I guess we start with clean up?

The side yard has many small tress, bushes, briars, and generally things are an overgrown mess. It also has a tree down from the ice storm this part of GA got in February. What a mess that storm created around here. It is nothing like anything I ever saw growing up in New England even. Much worse than a snow storm! So we need to get the tree out, some how. After we manage to pull out the dead stuff and trim things up nice then what though? I have been checking out the blog This Old Yard for ideas on what I can trim things up without killing bushes and make sure things end up nice and green.

  A home for the birds?

We have some beautiful birds around here and so many of them. I think someone who lived here once must have made them feel at home. There are broken bird feeders around the property and I would love to get new ones up. Not sure what kinds though.

This one is very nice and I love the reflection off the dome:

I guess we should start with one feeder that we think looks nice and see what the birds think of it before adding another one. I am reminded that more birds means less bothersome bugs around! I love that important point.

One of the reasons we moved out here, to the middle of no where was that we could be more in nature and less in the city. We got lucky really. Even though this house and yard need a lot of work we are up for the challenge. (as long as the plumbing and electrical hold up… but that is a story for another day!) For today though, it is a nice day out and there is a lot of work calling my name!