Landscaping Part 1

 When we first moved here, we didn't really think much about the landscaping around the house.  It was alright, just nothing special.  The longer we lived here, the more I realized that I just didn't like it.  The pine needles that were used for mulch were ok to look at, but were a bug's paradise.  I also noticed that the bushes on the side of the house were overgrown while several in the back were dying.  Doug and I decided that the best course of action was to take everything out this summer except for the palm tree and Crepe Myrtle.  Just getting rid of all of that helped, but we knew that we needed to do more.

We didn't have to do a lot of research to decide what we wanted.  We just looked around our neighborhood at other homes' landscaping.  There were some that were like ours that we just ripped out.  There were others that had bushes and plants with mulch that were well maintained.  Our favorite homes, however, had rock instead of mulch and very few plants in the ground.  Instead they put potted plants in their rock and fun lawn ornaments such as ceramic gnomes and mushrooms.  

Once we decided that we wanted to use rock in the landscaping around our home, the next decision was whether we would put it in ourselves or hire a landscaper.  Before I started researching online, Doug thought that we should ask our next door neighbors.  They had the color rock that we wanted and their landscaping looked very nice.  He told Doug the name of the company which Doug called in September to get a quote for putting in the rock both ways.  

We met with the landscaper and walked through our yard several weeks ago.  After talking with him we realized that it was a no brainer.  They could do so much more than we could on our own for not much more cost.  They agreed to start the process this week letting the painter finish first before they did their work.  The process started today as they put down the black weed guard, installed the black metal edging in the backyard and filled in the rock around the palm tree, side and back.  Even though we would have to wait for the cement curbing around the front window, it already looked so much better.  I was extremely happy that we decided to hire a profession.