When Joel was a kid, he used to help his dad with the yard, that was one of his chores, whether he liked it or not. Years and years have gone by since Joel has had to do lawn work. We've lived mainly in apartments since we've been married, although the townhouse in Virginia he got a tiny taste of lawn work with mowing, shoveling snow and raking leaves. His major request in finding a house here in North Carolina was that it have a nice size yard. And that we did.

Now our yard isn't acres upon acres but it's almost big enough for a riding lawn mower. Instead we got an electrical one. (You'll have to ask Joel about that.) Our lawn was one of the nicest in the neighborhood when we moved in and we wanted to keep it that way. Even with the drought and water restrictions hubby has managed to keep our lawn looking lush and green compared to some of our fellow McIntyrinians. (That's our community.)

In case you never saw the front of our house it has tons and tons of flowers and plants, unfortunately with Joel's job and taking care of Avery we just don't have the time and don't really want to spend that kind of money on the flowers. Don't get me wrong though, we definitely want to make sure our landscaping looks nice.

To Lowe's we go, of course, because of Joel's discount and the knowledgeable employees. We figured we'd get some bushes and trees and just leave a few of the flowers since bushes require much less attention. It was tedious work deciding what kind and what size and then how we would lay them out but we accomplished our task, with Avery's help of course.

Anyway Joel is ready to get the bushes in the ground and I'm ready to see most of those flowers gone. I can't wait until they start to fill in because they're wee little bushes for now. We'll take some pictures once we are done. But this is the fun part of being a homeowner.


(This is a picture of the front "garden" before we take most of the flowers out. I know they are pretty, just too high maintenance for us with the baby.)