Taming the Beast

When selling any home it is likely the last thing on the previous home-owner's mind to get that one last mow in before they leave - they'll leave the pleasure for the new homeowner.  When it comes to a foreclosed home you're lucky if the lawn has been mowed in the past few months!  We were lucky that the bank had been somewhat maintaining the lawn but none of the shrubs had been managed and everything was overgrown.

Here is a pic of the overgrown shrubs...half dead evergreen...weedy hillside...and the awful holly trees by the front door.






Unfortunately (for our neighbors) the lawn got pushed to the back burner with all of the other major issues inside the house that needed to be addressed.  Then we FINALLY bought a lawnmower; this really felt like the lynch pin of home ownership for us!  Only for it to rain...and rain...and rain.  Every.darn.weekend.

Isn't she a beauty?!  A pretty red Craftsman Self-propelled mower.  Well last weekend we braved the wet grass and mowed part of the lawn!  Only part because we only had enough gas for part of a tank, but man did it make a difference!  I'm going to make this picture pretty big so you can see just how long the grass actually was, this was our first path:

It's a pretty impressive swath, after about 10 or 15 minutes of mowing Micheal says to me "Man...I didn't realize quite how big our lawn really is!"  It is a big lawn, but this was before he took my advice and used the self-propel option.  Pushing through that jungle without it was exhausting I'm sure!





Of course I wasn't going to let Micheal have all the fun...

In the process of mowing we also discovered another underground hornet compound.  So we still need to take care of that, didn't these hornets learn from their less fortunate upstairs neighbors??


Finally, here is a video of Micheal tackling our insane hill that ultimately we want to landscape with a retaining wall so we have less of it to mow.  As you saw from the last post we've started collecting the bricks to make it!

Doesn't that look fun?!

We officially no longer the 2nd worst lawn on the block. :)