Yikes!

Before we moved into our house, a girl in my old playgroup told me that her in-laws live on Jennings as well, and asked which house we bought. When I told her it was the one on the corner, she said "Oh, that crappy little house?"

I brushed it off and chalked it up to the fact that I was so in love with my first house that I managed to ignore the badly neglected exterior. Jason and I still affectionately call it our "crappy little house", but now that my neighbors lawns are emerald green and their gardens are filled with blooming flowers, I'm starting to feel a little panic when I look at our yard.

Explanation: our house was vacant for about a year, and during that time no one came by to take care of it. No one raked the leaves last fall, which means that until about a month ago when the snow melted, we had a layer of leaves under a layer of snow, leaving us with mostly dead grass. No one pruned the drastically overgrown holly bush, no one weeded the gardens, no one painted the trim. So we are slowly getting our yard in shape, and it's a little overwhelming!

Tonight I went to Lowes to buy plants for our empty gardens and man, was it hard trying to choose things! I didn't know what would look good together or how to arrange things, so I just bought some things I thought looked nice and hopefully I will figure out where to plant them.

Here are some before pictures.... after pictures will follow in a few weeks!