So we gave in.....

After three years of home and land ownership we gave in. We paid someone to do our yard work.

In the end, it was an easy decision. Weeds and bushes, interspersed with poison ivy, had overwhelmed swaths of our backyard. For a not-insane amount of money we could pay a crew to clean our entire yard in a couple of days. They divided the work estimate by sections of our yard. Front center. Front right. Back right. Back center, fence line. Back of the house. Left side, from front to back. We agreed to have everything cleared except the left side, since we aren't sure where our property line is and are too lazy to check it with the county.

They mostly worked during the day when we were out of the house - which is just as well so that we didn't have to endure the noise, or feel guilty that we had finally given in and were not out there doing the work ourselves. We did catch them in action once or twice:

It's hard to capture the difference in before/after shots because we deliberately had them leave each area a little wild. Dealing with some ivy (English, not poison) and Japanese spurge (which I learned from our landscapers is more commonly known as pachysandra) is better than dealing with bare dirt and mud. And we already know our track record for getting grass to grow, so we though it was better not to tempt fate and clear out the entire area in the hopes of expanding the grass part of our lawn  - especially into a shady, low-lying section prone to accumulating standing water.

So without further ado - here's the bag corner of our yard, the messiest part, before:

(Note that we still never got around to chopping up the last of the little tree we took down last spring.)

 And after

Besides chopping up the rest of the trunk, they seriously cleaned out all the undergrowth, trimmed back the out-of-control azalea bushes, and removed poison ivy and tiny saplings. Now we can actually see the little brick oven from the house.

The back fence line, before:

And after:

Huge improvement - not just from trimming back the low branches on the tree but clearing out all the junk (while keeping some healthy looking plants like hostas). Again, we asked them to keep it a little wild - and keep the ivy on the chain-link fence - for some privacy from our neighbors.

Here's the back of the house, before:

Even though we cleared around the air conditioner every spring, the wild ivy and plants grew back by mid-summer.

But now they won't, since the landscapers pulled all that junk away:

(The hosta always looks a little unwell by fall - it will perk up next spring and do a marvelous job of hiding the AC unit.)

Before

Our yard certainly isn't a manicured beauty, but it'll be easier to spruce up this spring. Especially since now we can actually walk into the more "wild" portions of our yard and do some additional clean-up ourselves. It had gotten so overgrown (and filled with poison ivy) that we didn't even know where to begin before.

Giving Thanks

I'm a few days late but I didn't want to miss the chance to give thanks this year. We have so many things to be thankful for - amazing family and friends who never fail to help us with so much around the house, the fact that we are fortunate enough to be able to call in the professionals when needed, our health, and the simple fact that we have a roof over our head and food in our pantry.

This year though, I have one thing I am especially thankful for. Readers of this blog will appreciate our hard fought victory on this one: WE HAVE HEAT! Not just in some places and not just a little. For the first time since we moved in, each and every baseboard gets evenly, toasty warm. It is so nice not to struggle to keep the house at a comfortable temperature (admittedly, our "comfortable" temperature is a little colder than most people's). We no longer feel a weird current of air between our living room and our hallway, as the rooms that didn't heat stole all the warm air from the rooms that did. I am so grateful that this winter, we won't be forced to wrap ourselves in blankets and sweaters. Though we can if we want to, of course. It will be so nice to choose whether we want to huddle under blankets or not - and actually have the temperature respond accordingly.

Ikea visit treasures

A month or two ago, we wandered around our newly remodeled Ikea to see what nifty new things we could find. I thought I'd share with you what came home with us.

The first thing we saw were these cute little Norrora egg bowls in the bathroom section. We still hadn't figured out where to put cotton balls and q-tips in our new bathroom. We had pretty white crates hanging on the wall for shelves and I was afraid that using glass jars open on top would result in something crashing to the floor whenever I tried to take something out. These were the perfect solution.

Don't they look cute - and the soft white ceramic goes great with the rest of the decor.

Second, you may remember this pretty sewing table that I refinished this summer was missing a knob. I knew I wanted something glassy and transparent and preferably blue. Everything I found cost more than $5/knob. At six knobs, that's more than I payed for the table. So imagine my joy when I came across these cheap plastic drawer knobs called Satta.  They are available in a bunch of cute colors, including the perfect teal for me.

Here's the table with the old wood knobs. Nice but boring. Also missing one on the bottom drawer.

Here it is with some punchy blue accents. So much better!

The quality of the knobs are pretty appalling, but this piece won't be getting much wear and tear, so they should hold up just fine. At any rate, since they are just $2 for all six, they'll be fine until I feel like splurging or can find something more durable on sale.

Last but not least, the most expensive, and heaviest, purchase of the day. Here it is - the mystery box.

 It's Norden!

I was so excited about this table! We had gotten rid of the table that had migrated up from the basement, much damaged after this little incident chiseling glass out of a window frame. I don't think I ever took a picture of this room when the table was in it - but trust me when I say it took up way too much room and was ugly and broken. I was so excited when D allowed me to get rid of it - we put it on the curb and someone took it within a half hour.

Norden is the perfect replacement - it doesn't take up much space but expands to fit a lot of people, with two swing-out leaves. It has plenty of storage (3 drawers on each side) and, the icing on the cake, it was a surprisingly fast assembly.

So we didn't get out of Ikea without spending some mulah, but at least we came away with some nifty treasures.

Sandy Fever

A couple of weeks ago Sandy moseyed on by the house. She left us copious amounts of rain, oodles of downed twigs, and one large branch which decided to visit our roof and gutter on the way down. Fortunately we kept power during the whole event - which made me happy since I didn't have to manually empty the sump.

Here's the temporary swamp. This area always goes mushy when it rains a lot. At some point we should figure out whether we can direct the water any better. At least it's in the very back corner of the yard.

The branch. I had to put the blue bucket underneath the gutter so too much dirt wouldn't wash away. 

Branch + house = broken stuff. The gutter seems happier now, with it's silly grin. Just a little drooly.

$125 later, our roof guy replaced a few tiles and bent the gutter back. Our other options were: whole new copper gutter or just a few new feet of copper gutter. At $25/foot we weren't too interested in getting any new gutter installed. Also, new copper is very shiny, so the house would look very odd for at least a couple of years if we only got a few feet installed. So here's the original gutter, just hammered back in shape.

Not too bad. We've been living here for over three years now and have had blizzards, wind storms, tropical storms, and numerous power outages and have filed zero claims for the insurance company. They really should be dropping our rate!

(Here's hoping this post doesn't jinx us!)

Lawn Labors

Anyone who's been following this blog for a few years know that each fall and spring, we slave over trying to make the lawn look healthy and green. I mentally divide the work into two major parts. The first is reclaiming the lawn from overgrown weeds, bushes, ivy, border plants gone wrong, etc. The second is making the areas that are already lawn grow green, healthy, weed-free grass. (yes, all of these categories lead to a different post, which should give you some idea of how much effort we've put in over time).

This year, as I mentioned last time, we decided we needed professional help. We did some work on our own in the spring, before the bugs came out. We cleared out some more liriope from the side section next to our driveway, both giving the bushes more room and carving out some more "lawn" area from the overgrown border edge:

But then this started happening every time we went outside (if you can't tell from my ugly feet, I have about 10 mosquito bites from working in the yard for about 10 minutes). So we largely ignored the outside all summer, whenever possible, doing only minimal yard work and weeding.

So this fall when we realized we needed to hire some people to take down our tree, we also got a quote on the grass and decided that the monetary cost was far better than the blood, sweat, and tears we were devoting to making it look nice. Because the grass seed we were laying never grew healthy and because we have moss, the landscaper declared that our soil was too acidic (apparently this is good for gardens, but not for lawns). So he advised the lawn of debris, advised aerating the soil to break it up a little, laying down lime to turn the soil more alkaline, and then over-seeding with hearty sun/shade combo grass seed. For under $500, they would fix our front, back, and side yards.

They spend a couple of days doing everything they said they would, laying down some straw to protect the seed and even come back twice to re-clear debris - the acorns this year were particularly voluminous and hard to clean up (they cleaned up once again for free and then we agreed to pay them to come back once more).

We're not really seeing any improvement, but hopefully all the conditions are right and in the spring we'll get some new healthy grass. In the meantime, we're doing our part. Already last year, we were trying to get in the habit of keeping the lawn free of leaves with a combination of raking, blowing, and mowing (none of which are very good at clearing the acorns, which is why we paid to let them handle those). We learned that leaves are acidic, and so in addition to killing grass by covering it up, it also ruins the soil by releasing acids while decomposing (remember - alkaline is good for grass).

Late this week, the trees finally decided it was fall and dropped a bunch of leaves (with many more still on the trees waiting to fall). So today D cut the lawn, picking up the leaves as he went. It's really quite amazing that a lawn mower can be such an effective leaf clearer.

And now we wait until spring and see if we got our money's worth!