Cleaning up the outdoors!



Before: Front Porch view
Take note of the faded archway and leaves in the beds.



Before: Mail box and whole front yard
The gross mismatched mailbox and in this picture you can see the dying azalea bushes lining the house.



Before: side of garage
This picture is just sad!

So when I started this project I thought this one would be easy, and it could have been if I let it. Unfortunately I had to "do it right" (thanks Mike Holmes) so I have worked on tons of different projects related to this easy list item.
First I went to buy flowers a little early for spring, all they had was pansies. I know that pansies are more a winter flower and it was starting to get warm but I have had a few weeks with them and I really do smile when I see them. After all it is the flower of Tri Delta, specifically related to scientific name of the flower! I put them in the planters out on the porch and thought every time I put the dogs out how much better it looked. Then it started to bother me that the archway was fading and flaking and that the mailbox was black with a brown post. It inspired me to get some spray paint and just clean up the area a little.
The next adventure out was just the cleaning and scrubbing of the porch and sanding the arch before painting. Luckily Justin was in the basement when I was spraying the porch with water and scrubbing it becuase the caulk seal between the porch and house was leaking water into the basement. Add another part to this project.
So off to the store to purchase goods: paint and caulk.

I had to wait a few days for a non-windy day to paint and needed to take care of it ASAP. I know that the spring pollen is coming and I didn't want to have bright green pollen stuck in the wet paint. So I wiped dry and started painting. When I finished painting where I could reach I went looking for the ladder so I could paint the top of the arch. This also turned into a distraction from the completion of the list item. Our ladder will not fit on the small area of flat ground at the bottom of the stairs, and until I finished clearing out the planting beds I couldn't use the ladder. So now I have a half painted front archway and a frustrated attitude. The best idea I could come up with was just caulk the area and clear out the beds.

So that is what I did, and it took a whole tube of caulk to get the porch and front windows. I really need to get some more of that stuff and go over it again just to make sure that I got all of it. While I was caulking the windows I noticed the layers of dirt that had taken up residence on the slats in the window. GROSS. Add power wash house to the growing list of items that need to be completed before marking this item off the list.

Completing my days work I started raking out the beds. And of course it could not be that easy. Our neighbor, The Cahaba Snake Trap Man, came over and said something to the effect of be careful the snakes are out! GREAT! Thanks for the warning, actually really thanks. I went and changed shoes (which was important later) then back to work.
After the beds were absent the mountain of leaves I noticed how bad the bushes looked. One on each side of the porch is close to the end of life, or at least looks really dead. So after raking I decide to start digging up and put the dead one on the end and move one of the more full bushes to the middle. I got them moved and hopefully they will not die now that I dug them up during the growing season.
Here comes that part where the different shoes are important. The previous owners of the house had stationed HUGE rocks between each of the bushes. And they were great, except they block leaves and gunk in and keep the rake out. So, in order to make a larger flat area for the ladder, I plan to move these rocks near the porch and make a small rock garden. Moving the rocks I unfortunately dropped a rock on my toe. I kept on going with my project and it was not until after I took off the shoe I realized that my toenail was probably going to hurt for a while, and may fall off. I managed a long run with it a little swollen so hopefully it won't interfere with the ultimate goal!

I moved some other plants in and got rid of the rotten wooden barriers from the grass, all in an effort to make clearning out the area easier in the future.
In the process the side yard has been slightly overlooked, but I have managed to get the dead stuff picked up and out of the area.

After pictures to come, After I get the paint done on the archway!