These two big ball hedges are the last of the old landscapign that I’m taking out. Like the other hedges I took out last month, these guys are way overgrown, and can’t be trimmed back. They are over growing the driveway, and make backing out difficult. In addition the 4×4’s that were used to edge them are now rotted and ugly.
In Texas I’m sure they use big ole F-350’s for this sort of task, but around these parts we make due with what we have. This is of course ignoring the fact that just out of view on the left is my neighbors F-350, and hiding behind that is his son’s F-150. Regardless my BMW is more than up to the task of pulling out this measly little hedge stump.
These hedges are coming out this weekend. They look pretty nice from a distance, but upon closer inspection they are overgrown, and patchy. They extend over the walk by about a foot, and are also too tall. In addition they are takign up space that could be better used to plant vegetables in the summer, since its the only area that gets full sun all day. Heddges like this can’t be cut back because all of the foliage is on the outter inch or two, and therefore any pruning would leave just the branches behind. Therefore the only solution is removal.
Cleaning the patio never really occured to me until one day I was messing around with the hose and noticed that it looked alot whiter after spraying it in one spot for awhile. Of course the hose wasn’t really strong enough to clean it well, what I needed was a pressure washer. My friend Greg recently got one and was kind enough to let me borrow it. The difference it made was amazing. After a few hours my patio looks brand new. The only problem is that now I need to edge it, which of course means I need to buy an edger.
When we bought our house the landscaping in the backyard was in pretty poor shape. There were some nice things, such as a loverly lilac bush. But they hadn’t been taken care of and were all overgrown and weedy. Last year we didn’t have much time or money to spend on the backyard so I just trimmed it a bit and Jess planted a few flowers. This year however we have alot more time and a little bit more money. We aren’t going to go nuts and do the whole backyard at once, instead what we’ve done is cleared otu the worst areas, and just trimmed back some of the nicer bushes. This left us with a few nice spots to plant some.
On the left we have six plants, the little ones in the front are creeping flox, and I have no idea what the ones in the back are. Very helpful, I know. I rather liked the creeping flox, and not just because they have a cool name, but appartnly someone else did to, as it appears that someboday ate all of the buds on it. On the other side we planted 5 little rhododendrons. They are an unusual kind that have very little leaves, and the whole plant will only get 2-3ft big.
In the front yard we planted some bulbs, on the right, a whole bunch of tulips, and on the left some little daffodils, and some hyacinths. In between these we have some bigger bushes, and will also be planting alot of vegetables, as well as a pair of blueberry bushes.