Front Yard Before and After

 Time to show you what our front yard looks like and how far it's come since the land of "all grass and nothing else".  I thought I'd give you some pretty flowers to look at first before we delve into the ugliness that once was!

 As you can see, more sod that had to be removed, along with a couple bushes that weren't really doing anything for that little space by the front door, so we transplanted them. You'll see where in a second. 

 These are the front flower beds after the mulch was put in, along with feather reed grasses planted, and a border placed around the beds. The grasses are the same as in the backyard and they're going to look awesome once they grow to their full potential!

 These were the boxwood bushes from the front of the house, transplanted to in front of our shed on the side of the house. As you can see, this area is a little boring and needed some love. 

Plans we have for this side shed area:

• Scrape off old, peeling paint and repaint
• Plant some sort of trellis to grow upward and cover/protect the shed from the hot afternoon sun (roses?)

Front Flower Beds

 Now you can see what they look like since flowers have been planted. I mixed some perennials with annuals and they've already grown a lot compared to this picture (which was taken over a month ago). The grasses have really grown tall and are seeding right now. It's starting to look really great!

Plans for Front Flower Beds:

• See how the annuals fair and how the perennials grow, most likely plant even more perennials next year for less upkeep
• Remove window covers and replace with the metal grate type
• More mulch for the little corner spot by the front door

 Pretty flowers once again. Enjoy!

View from the Street

You can see, we moved the mailbox over to make room for the tree now planted in the park strip. Apparently that was the original location for the mailbox, but the old lady who lived here before us kept running it over, so the neighbors helped her to relocate it. We moved it back as I don't believe we'll risk hitting it as often as she once did! ;)

Anyway, the tree was transplanted from Mike's parent's house because it just did not fair well there, so we wanted to see if our sandy soil would be a better fit than their clay soil. It's doing wonderfully, so we're going to buy one more tree like it and plant it to the right, also in the park strip!

Plans for the View from the Street:

• Purchase and plant 1 more Eastern Redbud tree in the park strip
• Rework some of the sprinkler heads and such so we can plant a nice big shade tree (sycamore/london plane) in the front yard (our house faces full west so it gets a beating in the afternoon/evenings)
• Mulch for the trees
• Eventually expand the flower beds to wrap around the sidewalk
• Window boxes
• Shutters

 Front Porch

Yeah, this area needs some love. The planters and flowers have helped, but I've got big dreams for this front porch, such as:

•  New front door to go with the shutters we'll eventually do in the front (maybe paint the door an accent color before we can buy a new one?!?)
• Make a cute house number sign to go underneath the light fixture
• Update the light fixture, along with all the others on the outside of the house, so they match and look nice and fit our "style"

As you can see, more BIG plans for our home. We've got our hands full, that's for sure! But, we're loving being homeowners and enjoying this journey! What do you think? Any other fun ideas now that you see what we have before us and the potential for the space?