First up: the yard. We both agreed our townhome improvements had to start with the weedy, overgrown, neglected, hideous-and-half-dead-pine-shrub yard that came with our otherwise really lovely new place.
{Before…it ain’t pretty}
I’m not a big flower person (too ordinary for my tastes), and I’m definitely not a fan of the cost or daily effort required to maintain mulch, flowers, grass, trimmed shrubs, etc. And because I’m a Texas girl at heart, we decided that a snazzy, non-traditional for our neighborhood, eye-catching, low-maintenance, and cost-effective Texas rock garden with dazzling firefly mason jar lanterns, gathered driftwood fresh from the beach at Lake Ontario, white marble gravel, slate stepping stones, and a vintage half-oak whiskey barrel was just the ticket!
After designing, researching, purchasing, spraying, de-weeding, de-shrubbing, digging, turning, leveling, tarping, bricking, shoveling, placing, hanging, and seeding…we are thrilled with the outcome.
Without further adieu…our DIY landscaping reveal!
{Work in progress – the inaugural scoop of gravel!}
{After! A glorious improvement!}
{Before and after, side by side}
{And, of course, my beloved firefly mason jar lanterns at night. I adore them.}
Next summer we intend to turn the whiskey barrel into a fountain, take down the rusty street lamp lighting fixture on the left leaving just the pretty firefly lanterns for light, perhaps make and hang a live succulent wreath on the door (because I also have a hopeless obsession with any plant from the cactus family), and hopefully they’ll have pressure washed the siding and walls by then as well because, wow, do they need it.
But for now, this summer, we are all about enjoying our new yard as is!
We even won a gift card to Wegman’s from the townhouse company in the landscaping contest last week. :)
Not too shabby for a quick weekend DIY project.
Have you done any fun home improvement projects lately?
