Working on the Front yard

Front Yard

When we bought our house, it was in an area that we loved and near schools that we wanted our kids to go to. I actually did not love the house. JJ did and convinced me that even though it needs work, all the work was cosmetic and that "the bones" were good. 

We have slowly been working on the house. Mostly just painting and getting bookshelves installed. Now that the cosmetic is mostly done with the house, we are working on the outside. As noted in the previous post, we have started to work on the backyard. 

On to the front yard....

When we moved into the house, the front yard was nice manicured. It had jasmine under a beautiful oak tree as well as bushes around the house. We didn't really like any of the plants or jasmine so we decided to completely redo the landscaping in the front yard. 

Here is a picture of our front yard when we bought the house

I don't know if any of you have dug up jasmine before but it is really tough work and there was about 2000 square feet of it. To dig up the first 1500 square feet JJ would cut patches out and then use a shovel to get up under it and pull it up. This took about 2 years of working intermittently to complete. The last 500 square feet was a lot easier because he decided to spray week/plant killer on it. What a fantastic idea! It was so much easier to get up and only took a few hours to finish. 

Once the jasmine was out, we put in a hedge of boxwoods to outline the house and garage in the front. 

We got a load of top soil delivered about 2 weeks ago and worked all weekend to get it spread out. JJ originally planned to use the same hybrid grass seed that we have in the backyard since the oak tree provides so much  shade.  I was not the biggest fan of this as we have St Augustine grass in the side yards so we would have different types of grass in the front yard. 

Luck was on my side. A day after he spread the seed, the rains hit Florida and I mean hit. It rained for 5 days straight and so hard and fast that a lot of the soil washed away and all the seed is completely gone. 

JJ came home from church this past Sunday and announced that he is not spending more money on seed that might not grow under the oak tree. We are going to put St Augustine sod down in the next few weeks. I can not wait to have green, squishy grass in the front yard.  I know that our neighbors will be excited seeing as our front yard is an eyesore right now.

Unfortunately for them, our front yard is going to look like this for the next few weeks until we can get the sod in.

Just not as pretty as it looked when we moved in

To Do:
* put down grass
* add some color via flowers
* add a swing to hang from the Oak Tree


Hopefully I will have an update soon because H is tired of not being able to play in the front yard or backyard. 

Have a good day!

KK