The Passing of Time

When we bought our house four years ago, I had delusions of how much we would change and improve within the first year of living here.  What I conveniently forgot was that changing and improving take time and money.  Time is precious and we both work full time jobs and have six cats who have their own quirky issues that add a lot to our daily routine.  Money though was the main factor, and one I still like to forget whenever I can.

Fast forward four years.  We have made improvements, some.  We have painted the interior front half of the house and replaced most of lighting fixtures.  The floors are in desperate need of attention and the bathrooms both need some work but for now our main focus is the yard.  I love to garden, but that doesn't mean that I knew anything about maintaining a yard when we bought this house.  I have perpetually lived in apartments my entire life, so I was completely clueless when it came to basic maintenance and knowing what would grow and what wouldn't.  The fact that we had moved from Colorado to south Texas also didn't help matters.

Long story short, we killed the grass.  Killed it good and proper.  I would like to say this was on purpose, but who really wants to look outside and see dirt?  Not I.

But now there's a plan!  We've made some changes already.  We had a dying tree removed which helped immensely but also added to the dirt pile.  When my dad said, "Make sure to take pictures so you can see your progress," I thought it would be fun to share our journey of bringing our yard back to life, so here we go.

This was the yard after we mowed the lawn for the first time.  Isn't the grass beautful?  Don't get used to it.  The tree closest to the house, a maple, was just taken down because it was seriously ill, and the other tree, a live oak, was recently pruned.  Before both of these things happened though, the lawn was being massacred by dead leaves.  We couldn't rake them up fast enough, which in turn is why the grass died.

This is the yard now.  The next few weeks will tell if we're up to the task, but I think we are.