I mentioned last week that we desperately needed some mulch. Okay, I’ve been mentioning for the past year that we desperately needed some mulch. After all, our front yard was looking like this…

And this…

So last week, Mike drove around looking for mulch places. We actually did this last year, since the first year that we moved in we used bags of mulch in the middle of July and it was aw.ful. It took a lot of bags and many weekends in 90 degree weather, so we wanted to get some yards of mulch delivered. The problem we came across last year was that there was no landscaping supply place close enough to our house to qualify for free delivery. Every single place wanted $50 to deliver, so we finally decided to suck it up. Unless we wanted to pull weeds constantly like we did last year (uhhh no thanks), we didn’t have too much of a choice.

Mike ordered 3 yards of dark brown mulch, which was delivered at 8am this morning.

He worked at putting the mulch down all day and by the time I got home, the pile looked like this.

The 3 yards we ordered was just enough to cover everything out front in a nice, thick layer.

Not only did Mike slave over a hot stove pile of mulch all day, but he told me he planned to surprise me by planting some new flowers. Unfortunately, he ran out of steam, but I am just happy to finally have some mulch!

I would still like to add some things to our landscaping, especially on this side.

We added those tiny little daylilies here last year, but the rest of the bushes are near death. We also need to add some plants to the area in front of the garage where we pulled up those flat fern things that I hated at the end of last season.

Overall though, at least we’re no longer at a messy point. I just wanted to at least be able to maintain what we have after the baby comes. Not having to pull weeds is a major plus!

Keep it coming spring, we need some more blooms like this…

Anyone who lives in the Northeast knows that it has been unseasonably warm the past two weeks. Like, it was 82 degrees when I got in my car this afternoon. 82 in March is slightly ridiculous. Though we should be welcoming this weather since 1) I love spring and 2) my winter coat was going to stop fitting me any day now, the warm weather has brought about a series of unexpected issues.

Things are blooming! Which is beautiful and all with our daylilies sprouting up…

They look great now, but if you look closely, you’ll see that we barely have any mulch. We haven’t put mulch down since July 2010.

Which we thought would be fine until after the baby comes. But it’s only March and we have weeds…

Being 8 months pregnant, there is no way I can pull those. I struggled in the fall when I had hardly any belly. This time it’s up to Mike 🙂

Here’s the other side of our front yard, where we planted some new daylilies last year that are also screaming for mulch.

With all of the work we need to finish in the nursery and all of the things we need to buy before the baby comes, this early spring is more of a pain. I remember how awful putting down new mulch was when I wasn’t pregnant, so I know I can’t help Mike do it.

On top of the mulching issue, we’re dealing with a much larger issue… Our grass is turning green.

Which means it will soon be growing. Which means it will need to be mowed soon. For the first 2 summers we lived here, we had a lawn service cut our grass. The first time we cut the grass, Mike did it with our push mower and it took him 4 hours to cover our whole yard. We didn’t want to invest in a ride on at the time, so we found a landscaping company that cut our grass for $40/cut. The first year we lived here it was insanely hot and dry, so we literally got away with paying them like once a month. Last year it got expensive so we decided to cancel it. With a baby coming and Mike working from home, we figured it was a good time to cut some expenses and that Mike could dedicate more time to the yard. We thought we’d buy a ride on mower after the baby was born….but we will need one sooner.

We’ve been shopping around and the price of those things makes me want to fall over and die. I understand that we’ve already spent a lot on the lawn service, but a $1500 price tag is not something I want to swallow right now. We figured we’d do the 12 months of interest free financing that Lowe’s and Home Depot are always offering and we’d pay it off as if we were paying the landscaper. Or we can get a couple of pairs of scissors…

We might make a decision this weekend and I will keep you posted on the details, but right now we’re leaning towards a small John Deere. Anyone have any experience or recommendations? We live on a half acre of mostly grass and want something basic.

In happier news, we can officially begin hydrangea watch 2012 🙂

I can’t wait until they bloom. Wait, was I supposed to remove the dead blooms from last year? I meant to cut them when they were alive so I could enjoy them, but I didn’t…Whoops. I’m an awful gardener.

Remember back when Mike and I had big landscaping dreams? Okay they weren’t big dreams, we just wanted to dig up some plants, add a little fresh mulch and some river rock edging, sort of like these pictures I pinned on Pinterest.

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We wanted to do all of this before it got brutally hot, especially since last year we were mulching into July. Pale ol’ me doesn’t do direct sunlight well and our front yard has loooads of it. I looked at the calendar this weekend and somehow it is MID-JUNE.

This wouldn’t be so bad if the temps were in the 80s or so, but for several days last week we were in the triple digits. We actually did bring our grass back to life in all of our problem areas and it was looking fabulous this spring.

Our daylilies finally bloomed.

And our hydrangeas were growing like weeds!

As we saw the forecast for last week, Mike’s response was “well it was nice having green grass for a while!” I thought he was being pessimistic, but nope…

My poor hydrangeas had a few droopy moments in between watering and I thought I’d lose their flowers to the heat like I did last summer. We thought about doing a sprinkler system last year when our grass got fried, but I honestly forgot about it this year until every neighbor around us had them installed. We already committed to the patio and we just decided we’d rather spend our money on other things. Which means we run outside and move our standard sprinklers several times a night, while our whole block probably chuckles. We sort of have to do this because our association will get on us if our grass starts looking too neglected. Granted, I’m pretty sure extreme heat is a good excuse but we can’t let it completely die without someone complaining. It’s good and bad all at the same time. It maintains the value and curb appeal of our neighborhood, but forces us to move our fiesty sprinklers. Last night Mike took a straight shot to the crotch and looked like he peed his pants. I wish I had a photo.

With summer quickly flying by and scorching us at the same time, we have decided not to do anymore landscaping in the front this year. We are already booked with weekend plans for the rest of June and a chunk of July. We’ve decided we want to enjoy life on the weekends and spend some time on our patio, catching up with friends and just doing some summery things. And for those weekends where it’s 100 degrees and we can’t breathe outside? We have plenty of indoor projects we’re looking forward to finishing and we just bought a pneumatic nail gun to do so 🙂

For now, we’re just planning on pulling these guys regularly and adding a tiny bit more mulch along the edges of the walkway where it’s always weedy (okay a good amount of the weeds are actually stray grass from when we seeded).

We have a couple of extra bags of mulch from last year and we can always pick up more just to maintain the front. But as for any major redesigning? I’d rather be making s’mores at this point in the summer 🙂

I made a lengthy to-do list early in the summer full of things to do around the house and the blog during my semi-hiatus from grad school (I’m still taking 2 online electives this summer). But I think I’m going to kick the list to the curb and just wing things this summer. I have to stop getting mad at myself for not accomplishing enough, when I’m pretty sure I run around like a busy looney 90% of the time. It’s just in my nature as a nerd. You know those kids in school who were mad if they got a 95 on a test? That’s me. As an adult. In fact I did that just two nights ago with a quiz. So in an attempt to stop being so hard on myself, I don’t think I’m going to look at that list this summer.

Okay for at least this week 😉