Yard: The Before

When moving into my post-grad home, I had never been tasked with maintaining a lawn. I’ve mown a lawn, but was so horrendous that the task was handed off to my brother. When my roommates and I read in the lease that lawn care was not included, it wasn’t something that we thought would be an issue. We had a lawn mower, and friends who could put it to use.

We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. Without any idea of what was currently growing or had grown in the past, the yard quickly became out of control and overwhelming. The grass could be and was taken care of, but everything else felt like it was slowly but surely encroaching on the house. It felt like once it had started, there was no stopping it. So we didn’t.

There had been some weeding, but not nearly enough to keep up with what was going on. Thorny vines had wound themselves through other bushes and shrubs to find light for themselves. What used to be garden beds had been taken over by ivy and clover. And worse yet, in between plants were weeds that had grown four feet tall and were there to stay. They made themselves known, stood tall, and had extinguished my hope of pulling a full root. There were genuinely weeds crawling on top of weeds. It had become claustrophobic.

We let everything die off in the fall and winter. The only way to beat it was to let nature take its course.

At that point, even the bushes that were supposed to be there had become shoddy and overgrown. We left it like that for the winter. There was no reason to fight with the dead plants as it got colder, and it felt like the war was over. It was ugly, but it had been managed. That is, until the snow melted and the little green stems poked themselves through the turmoil.

This year, it was going to be different. We were going to get ahead of it. There was no more allowing it to look dilapidated. So this spring, I've given the yard a much-needed makeover. It’s not nearly finished, but feel free to follow

along as I continue to spruce her up.