Aug 2, 2010

Anti-Yard (Work)

Jon and I are not yard people. We are outdoors people, but not yard people.

Okay, I guess I should say we are not yard work people. We love being outside (well when it is not 100 degrees outside!), but neither of us are big on planting, weeding, mowing and all the other things that you have to do to maintain a nice yard.

I love spending time in my parent’s backyard. It is so relaxing and beautiful. I’m pretty sure it could be featured in a magazine. This picture does not do it justice AT ALL, but it’s the only one I have. My parents put a lot of work into their yard and it definitely shows.

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Occasionally Jon and I get motivated to work on our yard. Like last summer when we Jon put down a flagstone patio and build a pergola.

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He did a GREAT job and it our backyard much more enjoyable. 

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We also planted new grass in most of the front yard and part of the front yard. Luckily the grass has done great in both the front and backyard despite us doing pretty much nothing to it. But we have a flowerbed in the front yard that typically gets passed over. We planted some shrubs a few years ago and they are doing pretty well, but other than that it looks pretty blah.

I love the way it looks when we add fresh mulch but the nice dark color of the mulch never seems to last very long. The dark color seems to fade so quickly in the sun. A couple of weekends ago we decided to change that. We made our way to Home Depot and picked up a few bags of rubber mulch. Have you all heard of this? All the playgrounds at the schools where I have done school shadowing have rubber mulch and it is so much nicer than those dusty rocks they always had at playgrounds when I was growing up. It was definitely more expensive than regular mulch, but it says the color lasts for 12 years. 12 years! I don’t even think we will be living in this house in 12 years. I mean Aedan will be going into middle school in 12 years. Good grief. Really if it still looks good in a year, I will be thrilled with the investment.

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So far it’s looking great. We have had a few hard rains and we have had to sweep a few stray mulch pieces back into the flowerbed, but the color looks great and overall I’m pretty happy with it.

-Lauren-

1 comment:

The Haynes Family said...

haha! i remember those rocks. I used to get so bummed that it made my nice white shoes dirty - hahaha.

great idea on the rubber mulch. we need to mulch our flowerbeds (shrub beds...) too, but can't be bothered with the yard work either! oh well. :)