Spring. A New Beginning.

Sunday, 6 April 2014.

Winter lasted too long this year.  We have had more than our share of cold days and snow.  But life is a cycle and so are the seasons.  We just had to be patient.  I took to having flowers around the house.  (I kept waiting for Steve to tell me to STOP buying flowers.)  They really helped lift my spirits.

Why can't I figure out how to rotate my pictures?

Spring seems to have decided to come, and stay for more than a day or two at a time.  And with the warmer weather our thoughts turn to our yard.  We spent all of our energy last year on getting the house built.  Every once in a while someone would ask me what we were doing for landscaping.  I know I probably gave them a dirty look for even asking.  We were on design decision overload with the house construction, and there was no time or energy left to be thinking about the yard.

But now there is.  And we have been thinking through the winter months as well.  We have plans for a few trees, to provide long-term context, growth, and screening.  We haven't planted anything yet but have made most of the tree selections.  It will probably happen within the month.

In the meantime Steve has started doing a lot of "clean up" in all areas of the yard.  I had forgotten how BIG the yard is.  We have been raking up a lot of dead leaves from around the edges of the yard and along the driveway and front road.  Steve had a large pile of mulch delivered and has been spreading it around the base of trees.

We keep the trash company very busy

But the big news is that the grass is growing!!!!!!

My classic "mailbox" view of the house and YARD!

Our new front yard - looks a lot like the old yard :o)

I did a lot of grumbling to just about anyone who would listen, that spending money to seed the yard was a complete waste of money.  Well, I am happy to say I was wrong!  The entire front yard is becoming more "green" by the day.  The side and rear yards are taking longer to grow but we can see grass coming up between the straw.

 

View from driveway toward the back yard - mulch around the trees

We have to keep the construction silt fencing up until we get a "final" site inspection from Fairfax County.  We are going to wait a couple of weeks, to let the grass come in on all sides of the house, just to be safe.  Our inspector seems to enjoy finding fault, and we don't want to give him an excuse to "fail" us.  Hopefully by the end of the month the fencing will be down.