Well, here's my house when I bought it. For the following two years, I had no idea how to landscape or garden, and the weeds become overgrown. Heck, even the bushes that were supposed to be there became overgrown. But I am forced to put my house on the market, which means I need to learn how to care for my lawn as quickly as possible. And no, I'm not defaulting on my mortgage; my former (current?) employer merged with Delta Air Lines last year, meaning that my new home will be in Atlanta. I'm guessing that a four bedroom home is most desirable during the summer, when kids are not yet in school and families are interested in moving.
What I didn't realize is how much work it would be to maintain a house with less than a quarter acre of land. True, I've exacerbated things by letting things go for two years now, but here is a run-down of my weekend of outside work:
- Cutting a tree - the big tree on the right side of the picture - to look like the big tree on the right side of the picture. The damned thing has grown so many branches that the shrubs below are dying. At least they were until yesterday.
- Cutting the tree on the left side of the picture. You can't really see any branches in this picture, but they would've taken up 25% of this picture if I retook this same photo three days ago.
- Cutting the shrubs around the house. Yeah that's a lot of pruning. But what worries me most is that I don't think the shrub under the middle column exists any longer - wtf??
- Taking the branches to the compost site. This is no small task. After cutting down the branches, they piled up 5 feet tall by about 15 feet wide. I don't have a pickup truck, only an SUV, so it took some effort to break down those branches for transport.
- Adding concrete to my staircase. That took 450 pounds. Still drying. Not level at all. Not even sure it is all the same color. Hopefully an artist will see it, thinks it speaks to them, and will instantly want to buy my house.
I still have some painting to do, but I hope I can take a picture next week that is identical to the original. Luckily, you can't see the cement staircase from this view.
