The front yard has proven to be an unexpected adversary. You may remember that we initially tackled it in this post from 2015, when we hired someone to remove the rocks in our yard and lay down sod:
Then, Thambi sort of destroyed the lawn and Mike planted grass, which was covered in this post:
Well, the grass never really looked that good again. It was just fine. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great either. Mike felt that the grass wasn’t properly tilled and that might be part of the reason that the grass wasn’t doing so hot. We decided to try the This Old House Way!
First, Mike destroyed what little grass remained so we could start with a blank canvas. It’s definitely bleak:
We tested the soil and found that the acidity levels were perfect, strangely! Then we rented a tiller and went bananas:
We put down some sand (which helps with drainage) and tilled again! Here is Mike contemplating what a mess we have made and how much work we have left to do in the fading daylight:
Then Mike sprinkled on some grass seed.
Landscaping
I wanted to add some plantings in front of the porch to hide the janky concrete and add some curb appeal. I was hoping to plant some flowers but this part of the house is basically in shade all day, so our options were limited. Since I know very little about plants, I used this handy site called Gardenia.net which lets you filter by agricultural zone, height, width, shade / sun , and all sorts of other things to find the perfect plants.
For the front of the house, we decided on some boxwood and hostas, for a wee bit of contrast. We went with this tree-like boxwood to cover up the electrical box. We also chose some ground cover, which should flower a bit in the spring - I think it is called Blue Moon. Mike is watering the thirsty plants in their new home:
For the side of the yard by the walkway, which frequently had bald spots, we went with this grass-like thing, whose name I can’t recall. I kind of wish I had chosen darker mulch for better contrast. This color kind of looks too much like dirt.
At the end of a long day, this is what it looked like - still bleak but much more tidy:
A few days later, after daily watering, the grass starts to emerge:
And finally a few weeks later, it looks like a real lawn with intentional landscaping!!! (I apologize for the picture quality; it was raining).
Now someone just needs to rake up those leaves (cough cough Mike cough)…
Mo’ trim, mo’ problems
A few weeks ago, we also decided to trim the master bedroom windows. I won’t bore you with the details but here is a before picture of one of the windows. Note the damage the dog has done - this is a prime squirrel-watching location:
And here is the after picture… of actually the other window. I’m getting a bit lazy about taking good pictures these days. We used the same size trim as the downstairs windows, which are very close together. I realized that wider trim would have been much better on these windows - particularly given how tall these windows are. Oh well , lesson learned!
And here is a cool, old nail we found while working on this project. The house is starting to look a bit more modern these days. I sometimes forget that it is nearly 150 years old!
Now, we just have 4 more windows to go! Yay?
And now…a puppy picture.
There are still leaf peepin’ opportunities around the area. We checked out Dykes Marsh, just south of Alexandria, with the pup just yesterday! You can’t tell from this picture but Thambi had a blast!
