gardening and landscape
Front Yard Landscaping Plan
Let’s talk about the front yard landscaping plan for our Colonial Farmhouse. Plan is actually a loose term. It’s more of an idea floating around in my head. Think big picture priorities, not a deep dive into the details. Honestly, that’s my modus operandi 99% of the time. I’m much better at wrapping my mind around the big picture than I am with flushing out the tedious details of a project. Here’s how the front yard looked when we were considering buying the Colonial Farmhouse in April 2019. I can’t imagine why no one had made an offer on the house yet. Here’s another view of the front of the…
You Can Sell a Live Tree From Your Yard
Did you know you can sell a live tree from your yard? That’s a thing! Make sure it’s actually your tree growing in YOUR yard though. It might not be super common to sell a live tree from your yard, but it does happen. Determining if this is a viable option comes down to different factors. Is there demand for your tree? Is your tree healthy? Is your tree accessible or worth the effort of digging up? I recently embarked on a tree selling adventure, so I thought my experience might help you. We have a very mature Japanese Maple growing right next to our pool. The tree seems to…
Winter Yard Clean Up
Today I want to talk about something I’ve been avoiding for months – winter yard clean up. I’ve been avoiding this task for so long that in my part of the world it’s not really wintery, but it’s not full on spring either. It’s win-pring. Or maybe wint-ring. Let’s just call it early spring like a normal person would. We do have a few flowers poking their heads out of the ground, but the trees and shrubs have not budded or leafed out yet. That means I still have a narrow window of time to tackle winter yard clean up before things get really bushy. Oh, goodie. Our property was…
The Great Garden Misunderstanding
Our Colonial Farmhouse has a small patch of dirt that was used as an oddly placed garden for many years. The year before we bought the house a new septic system was installed and the garden area was damaged in the process. Add a little neglect to the situation and by the time we moved in the garden bed had become a riot of weeds with a few bits of fencing straining to stay upright. And that’s the nicest thing I can say about that eyesore. We’ve been meaning to remove or clean up the garden area for months, but it just hasn’t been a priority. A few weekends ago, Handy Husband…
I Painted Our Front Gate
Try not to be jealous, but we have a gate to nowhere. Well, not nowhere. If I walk from my front porch straight down the uneven sidewalk (thanks a lot, tree roots!) to the gate it leads to my mailbox. Two steps past the mailbox is certain death. People drive way too fast on country roads! I could also walk around the driveway to the mailbox and never have to use that gate or trip on the uneven sidewalk, but where’s the fun in that? I suppose if you want to get technical about things (apparently, I do today,) it really isn’t a gate to nowhere. It’s just a plain…
The Surprising Way We Cleared 75 Feet of Bushes
When we bought the Colonial Farmhouse it wasn’t visible from the road. This is saying a lot about the amount of overgrowth happening on the front of our property because the Colonial Farmhouse sits only 20-feet from the road. It should be visible to the naked eye. To further illustrate how overgrown the bushes had become, we didn’t need window treatments. No one driving by at night could peer in the front windows – at least not on the main level. I don’t even have a good picture of the overgrowth because there was nothing photogenic about the situation. Here’s this one though… Can you see the road? Or the…
$20 Outdoor Dining Set Makeover
One of the things I was really glad the seller of our home left when he moved out was all the outdoor furniture. Most of it was dirty and gross and not my style, but we would definitely use the furniture until I found something better…after I cleaned it all up. Okay, fine. We sat in it before too. It was an immunity-building experience. Of the three outdoor dining sets (yes, three!) that were left here, the one I liked the most was the one that was in the worst shape. Of course. It is a classic metal outdoor dining set and you really can’t go wrong with those. This…
Removing Rotten Trees and a Chainlink Fence
Last week I shared how we cleared a sight line to the pool and in that post I mentioned another section of our property that we’ve also been working on clearing and cleaning up. This was the back of our house when we moved in. There was nothing wrong with the back of the house, but there were some areas we knew could be improved upon fairly easily. The chainlink fence is what really bothered me. It wasn’t the prettiest fence ever built. It also made that space unusable since we don’t have a dog and don’t have plans to get a dog. The trees are what really bothered Handy…
Clearing a Sight Line to the Pool
One of the perks of buying a really old home is that the landscaping is mature. But with every rule there’s always an exception, right? In the case of our colonial farmhouse, our landscaping had ventured into a realm past mature. I’m not sure how to say this delicately…so I won’t. Every single tree, bush, shrub, weed, flower, vine and blade of grass on the property was overgrown when we moved in. Not just overgrown, but out-of-control. Not just out-of-control, but rapidly taking over anything and everything in its path. It crossed my mind that if I stood still for more than a minute, the Virginia Creeper vine would probably…
Welcome to Our Colonial Farmhouse
This is not a drill. I repeat! This is not a drill. Our house hunt is over and I can finally talk about our new home without jinxing the deal. Thank goodness! Our new home is actually quite old. Old as in founding fathers old! So without further ado, welcome to our colonial farmhouse! If the story is correct, the original part of this house was supposedly built in the 1780s. The “new” section of the house (shown above) was built around 1849. There is some etching in a stone in the attic with the builder’s name and date to verify the 1849 date. Let me do the math for you. At…
