Wide Open Spaces

What the what?! Not only am I writing a blog post, but I DID something today?! Craziness. 

Ever since spring break hit about 3 weeks ago, we've been running on crazy. We've reorganized most spaces in our home, freecycled more things than I knew we possessed, finished (mostly) our cloffice (closet-office), spray painted frames, fixed up plant stands, wood glued anything that gets fixed with wood glue, rearranged, reorganized, contact papered, donated, switched out wardrobes, opened my sewing machine and blender (finally free from boxes!), hung things, read Country Living magazine for hours, and finally...today...pulled out bushes! 

My lovely father-in-law was SO MUCH help in this most recent endeavor. I'm starting from the end because, well, I left the camera with most of the other photos at work this weekend. Dumb. 

Our house has had boxwoods since I moved in 8 years ago. It also had a crepe myrtle (love) and has grown two more. This is bad. They get crazy and they block windows and- OH!- I can't forget the unreliable rose bush. Every year I go to cut it back at the time required and it randomly blooms. So, last year, I left it alone and...it didn't bloom. The whole year. It's blooming right now, so we left it as-is. I also pruned azaleas (no photos), but we have a billion more to prune and/or transplant. I'm really leaning toward transplanting and making a giant azalea-loving area. We have to ask my FIL his thoughts before we progress in that effort. 

Anyway, short and sweet, here's the before of the left side of our house (as you face us):

That monster was the largest boxwood. That window actually goes way above my head. I'm hiding by the storm door (nice fall retreat t-shirt from way back) so you can possibly see some scale. I'm probably 6-8 inches higher than the bottom of the bush and it's totally as tall as me, maybe taller. It was the last one we attempted to pull out (after much pruning so we could get to the roots), but you'll see the progress in a moment! 

Here's the right side of the house with our poor, pathetic boxwood, crazy baby crepe, and the baby boxwoods trying to grow around the ginormous crepe myrtle (Mama Crepe, if you will). In fact, the crepe myrtle on the far side is Crepe, Jr. Also, this is my FIL already digging. He was so eager I couldn't get out with the crappy phone camera before he'd taken to digging. 

And now, for the moment you've all been waiting for: HOORAY FOR BREATHING ROOM!

It looks so crazy-good, I honestly don't know what to do with myself. We really want to figure out what we'll plant here, maybe small bushes, maybe some annuals, maybe perennials, maybe just more bulbs in the fall for my spring bed! I'm not sure, we're waiting for the money to roll in (har har), so we'll see. We'll have to extend the border away from the house because most of the things will require some space away from each other (and Mama & Crepe, Jr.), but we're ok with that too. Long-term, we really want this cool awning over the front door with a wider stoop like our neighbors have. We'll see. That would be on the landlord (what say you, Mama?)!

Anyway, we also then ended up cutting off all sorts of tree limbs (that you see hanging overhead) as they were rubbing on taller cars in the driveway (not good ol' sunny sunfire, though!) and also covering our neighbors mailbox. Craziness. 

I'll be back later with more updates to see if we can get this little blog a-rollin'! Thanks for stopping by! Leave a comment (preferably here, facebook comments make me confused- simple minds) if you please!

love,

jess (&chris)