Yard Rogaine

As I have told you many times before, our yard is a mess. It is way, way, way less of a mess than it was when we bought our house, but it is nowhere near the vision that we have for it. Like, if you want to get all metaphorical then our vision for the yard is for it to be beautiful like Michelle Obama, but right now it is looking more like, well, I guess I would put it more in the Ke$ha ballpark. However, before you judge me too harshly, I must point out that it used to look like Donald Trump so real progress has been made. The main thing that hinders us is that we are still constantly ripping things out of the inside of our house and dragging them outside, so we don't want to put a bunch of effort into our yard quite yet, because having shit dragged across it every 5 minutes will just re-mess it all up again. Also, getting a yard in shape takes money. And right now we are spending our money on inside things, like the beautiful new furnace we got for this winter which we love but cost us serious bank. I really wish I was a baller shot caller so that we could pay for everything as fast as we can work on it- but alas it is not to be, and so the yard has been moved down the list.

One thing we have done is planted our front slope, which doesn't get walked on or dragged on or anythinged on, so at the very least, when you drive up to our house it doesn't look horrible from the street.

I took this photo in the pouring rain, so just pretend that it looks good, ok? Because really, it does look pretty good in real life.

Once you walk up our front stairs, there is a flat part of the front yard where nothing grows. This is because most of our teeny tiny front yard is dwarfed by a gigantic pine tree that really should never have been planted in the yard to begin with. So the patch of yard around the huge trunk is really bumpy (the root system is busting upward, taking the pathway to the front door with it, hi friends, don't trip and then sue us, please), and full of dirt and pine needles. Nothing will grow there because the pine needles strangle everything across the front of the whole yard. We really need to get rid of that tree, but our tree-hugging souls have been putting it off. This summer will be the end of the line though- the tree is going. Ugh. Let's not talk about it.

Anyway, once the tree is gone, I have high hopes that we can plant that little patch of land with something pretty. I haven't decided what yet. Flowers? Shrubs? Or should it be a little patch of grass? Philosophically I am not a huge fan of grass, since it's a pain in the ass and a water-suck, but I am from the midwest and so having a yard with no grass seems wrong somehow. I feel like there needs to be grass somewhere, right? No, there really doesn't, actually. Maybe a little? Blah, no, why? Grass is pretty! So are other things! (See, this is exactly how it goes in my head too).

Well, so far I haven't had to make a final decision, because the big pine tree has been there, making most of our yard look like this for the past few years.

Some leaves drift over from the trees in our side yard, but really that is about all of the action we are seeing.

But then, something weird happened. Two weeks ago.

All kinds of shit just started growing under the pine tree! Grass, and flowers, and other ground cover. What kind of weirdo magic is THAT? After years of nothing, spontaneous greenery is happening. And it happened like, overnight. I walked out of my front door one morning and was all HA-WUT? Were we hit by a guerilla gardener who just could not stand our yard for one more minute?

Mysterious.