Never-ending Landscaping Catastrophe

If you've ever been to our home (actually, B's home), you'll know that B doesn't exactly have the manual labor skills of the landscaping gurus of Westpark. (Fyi, if you don't live in Houston, Westpark and various hardware stores are where the landscaping/manual labor "folks" like to hang out looking for some dough in case some patrons would like to get some yardwork done.) Mind you, we got the knowledge - but the patience and motivation to get and stay in the yard? None whatsoever.

So, I've made it a personal goal to get this ish done. And this past weekend was the first time I put some great effort out to have a vast majority of the planning done and much of the little things cleaned up.

My yard and gardening goals:

~ Cut, root, and rid of as many weeds as possible; apply weed killer spray all over.
~ Clean up branches and leaves of the oleanders in front yard and walkway. Maybe even rid of the front yard ones? Sure they might look nice in the spring but they are like yard polluters, getting leaves and flowers everywhere! Might replace them with something else like bushes? Will think this over.
~ Prune and cut down some front yard trees. I had no idea there was a method of pruning. Rather overwhelming when reading up on it, but simple when doing it - just go cut crazy!
~ Add hardscape (i.e. stones/concrete).
~ Rake up leaves and clean up garden areas. Put on new fertilizer.
~ Plant some easy-to-maintain flowers and bushes to add some color.
~ Perhaps add new patches of grass? Believe me - we need it. Some areas are so well covered from sun light (by the mile-high oleanders) that grass has stopped growing there. And bushes that don't get sunlight actually are growing away from the oleanders pointing towards our driveway where nothing covers it. I noticed this when I was trimming the bushes. o_O
~ Hire those Westpark peepz (and maybe my dad) to do the majority of this! My dad is so into gardening and is literally outside 24/7 that he has been approached by random people who walk by his house if he can work on their yard because they think he's some sort of landscaping company. They have said they see him outside every weekend so they mistake him for a manual laborer. Ha, the one-man landscaping crew. But seriously people, can ya get a hint that the man lives there if he's working on this one yard (his own) all the time? Aiya. Oh yeah, and he's the one who so greatly enlightened and influenced me to get into this mode. He kicked start most of the cleaning up (to where we can actually get to our front door!) and even got his people who are working on his lakehouse project to come pick up all the yard waste for us.

I mostly got this sudden motivation because I've been jogging outside a lot more lately. I observed that all the other homes had a clean, decent-looking yard, except, yep you guessed it, ours! Now, why do we have to be the blacksheep? I don't want us looking like lazy slobs. Too late maybe? Eh, better late than never.

Also if we have more kiddos, they need more house room and yard space, which means a big move! So I figured if we plan on moving (hopefully by end of this year or next year), I'd want this yard to look decent for selling or at least renting. There's nothing quite like having a fresh start, especially when you have new people to share it with.

This past weekend, I spent about 3 hours each day working on the yard - weeding, cutting, pruning, trimming, raking, and cleaning up. It sounds like a lot, but when you look at the yard, it looks like I didn't do anything. Well, it does look somewhat cleaner? Sigh. Needless to say, I'm sore all over. Talk about a major workout. No wonder my dad is so fit for his age! And not to mention (some) of those landscaping workers.

I know this whole landscaping/gardening thing isn't exactly entertainment weekly, but hey, I just wanted to stress what a great workout it is and how satisfying it is when you see such a huge project accomplished. Plus, it's very stress relieving!

OK, wish me luck!

I will post pics of progress later.