I love our beautiful property but I would be lying if I did not admit it is a lot of work, especially in the spring !! It is a  bit more work this spring as we had rented the property to our daughter and her family for two years and they kept it up as best they could , well mowed yards, edged and bushes trimed, with full time jobs and two kids, but it is just not the same as you living in your own house. This past winter was pretty brutal and caused the demise of a few long term plants which was sad, and then spring hit, just as we moved in , my husband was working massive overtime and then we got the gift of a week long visit from my mother in law. The yard , put in simple terms, is a mess !! Weeds, bushes taking off and getting unruly . My husband and youngest son, who is living with us while he saves to buy his own place, have kept up the lawns. But the flower beds have been a lot of work to get back in shape and the usual spring weeds are in full force !!

I thought I would take you on a tour of both the mess,  and beauty of our wonderful yards !!

Starting in the back  yard, which has been our focus both because we live in the back of the house and look out at the pretty back  yard, and come in through the back door and most importantly had our Easter egg hunt back there, so it got the most work, but still needs some !!

We call the back half of our back  yard the back lot because when we bought the house it was unfenced accross the back and side and had a six foot fence where the picket it now so it was not used for the first couple  years as we did not even see through the six foot fence and gate.  In 2004 we had the fence put in around the entire property, back and alley side of back lot, and side of back yard between us and our  neighbor, as we were open to our neighbors yard that first two years as well and hated it, no privacy or protection at all !! We had a wedding here ten years ago too and made the six foot fence in between into a picket just accross the back for better flow for the wedding.

It is open to the actual back yard for around ten years now , but it is still called the back lot. We have a lot of plans for back there, more trees , a playset that is in the side of the yard in pieces ,  and eventually a raised garden bed in the middle !!  It is a good size yard, our entire property from the street to back fence is about 225  feet deep and around 85 feet wide. It is a really nice sized piece of property !! The back lot is the 85 feet wide and I am not really sure how deep it is !! Pretty good sized though. Some day it could have a built in pool back there !! That has been a long held dream !!!

When my wonderful hubby mowed he avoided my beautiful primroses, in Calif they were called Mexican primrose and you could buy them at the nursery, here they are wild flowers/ weeds ,  and they call them buttercups, even though they are pink , lol !!

We brought a gate from our other house, left over when we fenced the house for our kids when we traded  houses to come home , and it will be a trellis for our beautiful climbing rose we just bought, a bright red !!! He has a way to go to even reach his trellis !!

In the picture is our four year old Oklahoma Red Bud, love that tree !!!

My nasty clugged bird bath, filled with pecan tree  catkins and leaves and muck, just from two days without being cleaned !!

My clean pretty bird bath, with squirrel turned right way, not sure why he was backwards, think grandkids might know something about that, lol !!

sorry these are blurry, my camera gives  me trouble with the macro lense every so often !! today is one of those days !!

the roses along the fence between the back yard and back lot !! 

somebody new, Our daughter planted him while we were  gone, only one that took as it is the only sunny corner of a shaded all but early morning , flower bed !! I planted the rest with hostas and impatients and they are very happy there !!

another wild flower in the back lot, have no clue what it is , but there are a few around and I love them !!

The playset for the kids our younger daughter got rid of when they bought thier house, I am thrilled to have it and cannot wait for my hubby to rebuilt it a bit stronger and install it !! You can see my  red metal potting table that I am not using because of where it is, our kids stuck it there because they were not using it while we were gone and they rented the house !!

Now, the front yard, which is really wild right now and in bad need of everything , but I will start with our beautiful climbing rose !!

These were  taken through the french door in my studio , which is the front bedroom off the porch. Hard to not be happy looking out the windows at this all day while I work !!

Now I went around and took some up close

Our other front yard roses , two combined, one a bush, one a climbing, LOVE them both !! this is the climber

this is the bush

The full shot of the flower bed and then the second picture is  the other weed bed, um, flower bed, empty, white rose in front died, some Mexican primrose, and just a ton of weeds to deal with , opposite side of porch from roses I just showed in t his first picture

  we want to push that faucet back you can kind of see through the weeds,  over to the corner of the house and make the flower bed a bit smaller maybe a small one by the steps for one rose bush and then push the rest of it back to the porch depth, it is just a huge flower bed to take care of, but we will see !! You can see the dead rose bush right up by the porch steps, it was a pure white with touches of red in it, so sad it died !!

One of our crepe myrtles out in front of our fence got hit hard this winter, he is the smallest of the five but  the rest are fine, we will have to cut him back to give him a fresh start. They are all the dark pink ones.

the bushes to the side of the house took off like crazy, they are top priority now that we got most of the back yard under control, they are way over the windows !!

The picket fence is another issue, it is just a mess, but we will get that done over time, it is all around the entire front yard and looks pretty bad !! We have some gaps and breaks and it was done poorly before we moved in and the 12 years we have been here, minor  repairs and many  paint jobs have just not been enough, we are in the middle of major repairs now. One panel at a time !! You can see one we did last year, this year this entire side will get done and hopefully most of the rest of the yard too !! That is not vinyl either, my husband cut and I painted primer and two coats of paint on each stringer and picket !! Solid wood !! The posts are fine, they were pressure treated. Cannot wait until the entire yard looks like the nice one , but it will take time, we are doing the worse ones first all around and then will slowly fix the others.

So, that is the tour, I hope to be sharing a lot of pretty pictures of cleaned up and replanted flower beds, repaired and rebuilt fence panels !!

my final picture, some free flower pots left by a trash can at a park when we took my mother in law out of town for the day,  nothing was around close to the trash , so you could tell they were for someone to take , so exciting, the one is huge !! Two are terracotta and one is ceramic !! My wonderful hubby helped me put them in the trunk !!

So, anyway, glad to be home, and look forward to getting this place where we want it to be !!

Thanks for stopping by !!

Stephie