A Quick Walk Through Our Yard

I know this post is going to leave you wondering why I'm making such a big deal out of my yard. I know a lot of you have A LOT more things going on in your yard. But if you are new to my blog, I will catch you up. For the past 16 years, Mr. Chat has done a lot of landscaping on our property. His efforts paid off, because it was always so beautiful. People would stop and make comments about how pretty our yard was. Mr. Chat even got offers to do landscaping on other properties. He would love to do landscaping for a living, but he has a full time job and just doesn't have as much extra time to devote to it as he would like.

I never get attached to a particular land scheme he has created from year to year, because he gets bored with it. The man moves plants, bushes, & trees around in the yard like a woman moves furniture in her living room. I was accustomed to the look and the personality of the yard constantly changing from year to year...but two years ago..I was SHOCKED and a little embarrassed. The ditch beside our property started to create a flooding hazard. Mr. Chat stripped our yard. He hauled in a lot of dirt so that he could build the yard up. It never failed, every time I saw a little green twig of grass peeking through, he would get on his mower and rake it down. Then he would have more dirt hauled in. I'm sure our neighbors weren't happy with us. First of all, our yard was hideous looking. But also, he created a lot of dust every time he ran his machine across the dirt. I guess doing all of that put him in a pretty destructive mood because he took down some of our Willow trees along that ditch. Of course they had been killed from the ice storm that we had 2 winters before. Then he had the nerve to go to the front yard and take some of our trees down there. We had two trees that he had planted side by side when they were saplings. He twisted them together. They grew and formed together and looked like a spiraling tree. I loved that tree! But he said the roots were going to break up our driveway. He promised that he would replace them with a tree that's roots grow straight down. But after 16 years, I'm use to seeing full grown trees, not little shrimpy looking things. This is going to take some getting use to. Anyway, I will show you how a few of our plants are developing. Remember, everything out there is a work in progress, so I'm only going to show you a few things.

Smoke Tree

Dwarf Chinese Red Maple

Various plants in the front garden

Hibiscus Tree

That's all for now. Mr. Chat has planted some new bushes along the sidewalk, but they are teeny-tiny so I won't show them. I was going to show some of the plants in the back yard, but the neighbor man was out in his yard. He's new to the neighborhood and I didn't want him to think he has a stalker. I'll let him live here for awhile before I let him know just how weird the neighbor lady is.