Neighborly Apology

So I was going to take some 'before & after' photos of the yard work I did this weekend, but I was too focused on getting this project finished.

Yeah, it was bad enough to do 'before & after' photos!

Okay, so to explain myself to our neighbors--I didn't start this project last October wanting to get about halfway done, and leave it throughout the winter...I promise!!  When one has only a 2 hr window (during Mav's nap time) to get tasks such as this done, it takes a while.  It just so happened to start snowing in October...and not stop until 2 weeks ago, ha!

Our house is a corner lot, so it's really like having 3 yards--a front yard, back yard, and side yard.  The side yard is bigger than our front yard actually.  Anyways, so along that side of the house we have 10 Burning Bush plants.  They are beautiful bushes...when they aren't 10 feet high and wildly overgrown.  Ever since we moved in a few years ago, they've been SUCH a pain in the you-know-what to maintain.  Originally, the house inspector told us that we should dig them up and re-do the landscaping because rainwater doesn't drain away from the house.

SOOOO  every spring we say we're going to rip them up.  But then life gets in the way.  And we end up sort of trimming them...but they're still pretty overgrown.

Until last October.  I was fed up.  No more ridiculously overgrown wall of bushes.  Enough of the madness!

I started trimming about 2 feet off of the bushes.  When I got to the air conditioner (the halfway point) I decided to cut them down even more.  Those suckers were gonna get trimmed down about 5 feet!!  No more overgrown bushes.  They MUST get down to a manageable size.

But that's when it started snowing...

And so, the eyesore of the neighborhood was born.  Picture five bushes about 7 ft tall, air conditioner, two bushes about 3 ft tall, then three bushes about 10 ft tall.  Can we say tacky? :)

Yep.  The side of our house looked that way for roughly 6 months.  Eeek.  It seems worse in writing!

So to my wonderful neighbors (most of them are elderly):  we're sorry!  Fortunately they are all very nice people and fondly remember trying to upkeep a house with kiddos running amuck.  And they all love Maverick.  Especially when he's running around the backyard playing in the mud and rocks.