First Day of Spring!

and 85 degrees today! Indiana is in full bloom. It seems like out of nowhere trees are covered in blossoms or budding leaves. Just a few days ago they all had bare branches. We have had the windows open since last week and it makes me so happy to feel fresh air breezing through the house and to hear birds outside chirping away. They kids and I have spent a ton time outside-just enjoying being out of the house. I spend a lot of this past weekend working in the yard. The home’s prior owner once had the yard nicely landscaped, and I bet it was beautiful. She neglected to keep up with it though, and a massive overgrowth of weeds took over. Last Fall my Mom and Dad removed 3 truckloads full of nasty weeds.  Once removed, we were surprised to find lots of nice tall ornamental grasses and Hibiscus plants.  And now I’m excited to see what kinds of plants we will have popping up this spring and summer.  Like these.  We have 2 of these gorgeous Japanese Magnolias.

They smell like perfume!

We also have 2 weeping cherry trees. 

My yard has the potential to be so pretty! I’m motivated to work hard this spring and summer to get it looking like it should.  Maybe if I plan to blog about it with some before and after pictures-I’ll stay motivated. hopefully.

Here’s what I’ve got so far…

Here is the house before we moved in.  You can’t really tell by the picture, but those bushes in the front were covered in brown spots and looked really bad up close. We pulled them up and replaced them with some boxwoods.  Holy cow, that was a lot of work! The old bushes had been there awhile and their roots where very thick and spread far out. It took awhile to dig them up. The new bushes look small now but in 3-4 years I think they will be the perfect size.