When we bought our house back in February of 2020, we agreed that we would not tackle any major landscaping during the first year. We wanted to let everything cycle through all of the seasons before we made any big decisions. There were a few exceptions.
We had both of the trees in our front yard removed along with a few flowering bushes on our side yards. The flowering bushes had not been tended to and they were 10-12 feet tall. They blocked the sunlight coming into our house.
We also hired someone to paint our garage. It was rather shabby. This is the before photo.
A couple of weeks later, after it was painted, we spruced up the side with mulch and birdhouses. We were impressed with the before and after.
At that point, as much as we were tempted, we held off with landscaping and making any major changes to any of our yards.
To back up a bit...
In the back of our house, we have 2 back yards. Both fenced in. One big. One small.
In the small backyard, we had a couple of bushes that were overgrown.
Those were taken down.
We also had a cherry tree very close to our raised screened-in back porch.
We left it.
We also didn't touch the apple, pear, and peach trees in the far corner.
As late Spring and the Summer season approached us, a lot happened...
The overgrown cherry tree bloomed. The flowers were absolutely gorgeous, but they attracted thousands and thousands of bees.
That was not a good thing because I'm mostly fairly certain I am allergic to them.
Those little buggers found a way into our screened-in porch.
The cherry tree produced lots of cherries, however, it attracted lots of beautiful Cedar Waxwing birds. It was the first time that we had seen this bird.
They are stunning.
At any given time, there would be 8-12 Cedar Waxwing birds in the tree.
In addition to the Cedar Waxwing birds loving the fresh fruit, so did the squirrels.
After a week, there were no more cherries on the tree, but we had hundreds of cherry pits to rake up.
The peaches made an appearance...
But.
A few weeks after taking these photos, all the fruit disappeared.
Lots of peach pits on the ground.
The wildlife got to them first.
And yeah, we have a lot of wildlife here including woodchucks, fox, bobcats, coyotes, deer, bears, etc.
They're hungry too.
Our apple tree did not produce fruit late Summer into the Fall.
When Spring finally approached this year, we were ready.
The first thing we tackled this year was the corner of the bigger backyard.
We really wanted to spruce up this corner of our bigger backyard.
Last month, Lisa cut down the fruit trees.
I saw potential with leaving about 5 feet of the apple tree standing.
She also left a portion of the pear tree to support the largest of our DIY dragonflies.
It took a few weeks, but it's finally done!
Yayyy!
A standing ovation to Lisa who did most of the outside work.
This weekend, we'll be tackling the landscaping on our side yard.
Until then, I'll be working on restoring some gorgeous outdoor pieces.
Stay tuned!
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