Self-Designed Landscape - Beautiful, but not for the faint of heart!

When I bought my little house on the curbside postage stamp ground, it was a blank canvas.  I required the 6-foot white vinyl privacy fence for the back yard as a term of the sale.  Otherwise, I had a centered house on a plot of creeping grass with two huge pine trees out front.

The trees were great for bird-watching - chickadees and woodpeckers frequented the shady front yard.  The grass, I was told, was the really good stuff.

By first summer, I realized the pine trees dripped sap all over my yard furniture, the grass was aggressively creeping over the sidewalks every week or two, and I guess I wasn't looking at the crumbling curbs buried beneath the mid-January snow when I signed the initial agreement.  Not only that, the dog hated the back yard - the fence blocked his view of anything interesting and he entertained himself by digging holes.  And since he much preferred the busy street out front, it became obvious that I'd need some sort of fence out front to keep him from escaping when he dodged me at the front door.

I got rid of the sappy pine trees, and took the most immediate, affordable route to secure the front entrance - ornamental fencing from Lowes that only requires driving stakes into the ground to install.  Not cheap, but I was able to start by fencing the front porch, the next year adding on/expanding further.

Lesson #1 - Fencing, even the low, ornamental type, adds maintenance to cutting the grass. 

I had to buy a weed whacker, in addition to the lawnmower and the sidewalk edger (to keep the creeping grass under control), and of course, then I needed a shed to store them in.  You don't put an 8x10 shed on grass, so there was another project of digging the foundation, shoveling in stone (by the wheelbarrow-full, since there's no rear access to the property and the stone had to be delivered out front).  The shed filled quickly, as did the list of duties and projects.

As the front fence expanded, so did my desire for flowers, a patio, and yard decorations.  I hated dragging the mower around all the obstacles in the yard, I hated weed-whacking, I hated the constant sidewalk trimming.  So, I vowed to get rid of all grass except the back yard.

I've spent at least 6 years building a gorgeous front yard, complete with patio, fountain, and flower beds galore!  Neighbors and strangers, alike, express their appreciation for the beauty.  The side yards have been painstakingly paved in a wide variety of pavers and patio block - to cut down lawn maintenance and direct rainwater away from the foundation.  Even the back yard has paving and flower beds around the perimeter fence.

It's been a blessing that I live on such fertile ground, that volunteer tomatoes magically grow into crop bearing plants, rose bushes double or triple in size from one season to next, seedling trees grow quickly, and everything grows at least twice the expected size.

Unfortunately, the weeds follow the same pattern and effortlessly anchor themselves in every crevice and surface.  That means the flower beds, the patio, the still crumbling curbs, and every paved surface on the property.

Yesterday, I spent at least an hour or two pulling hardy weeds, just in front of the front fence.  I filled two large trash cans, overflowing.  I haven't touched the front yard or the back.

Some days, the creeping grass and sap-dripping trees don't seem so awful, after all.

But then, I guess nobody could have convinced me of that when I started this journey...