Surprise... Landscaping!

Well, in my last post I mentioned that I had a landscaping pro coming to work on our yard soon.

I guess I misunderstood when we spoke--I thought he was coming a week from this past Friday. I was wrong. He came this past Friday. It was so cool.

When Avy, Xavier and I arrived at home, we obviously noticed there was a strange truck in the driveway. Everything became clear to me right about then...

And we were happy.

Here's the newly cleaned-out back yard.

I don't know if this picture does the work he did in the yard proper justice.... there were a lot of branches and left-over leaves laying around, making the yard look smaller and messier. He also cut the grass.This is the top of our driveway. I don't have a "before" shot right now, but take my word for it--that area was full of debris. Now it's clean and neat. It's so much nicer.


These are the bushes in front of the house. I was frankly kind of embarrassed at the amount of leaves that were underneath these. Landscaper dude got 'em out of there. Nice.


This is the tree in the front yard. Landscaper dude didn't do anything to the tree, but it's pretty, and I actually was incorrect in identifying it in previous posts. I thought it was a Japanese Maple. It is not. This is a Dogwood. And it's pretty sweet.

This is the front of the house. The grass is nice and neat, but, if you look off to the right, you can see a big pile of leaves right near our neighbor's house. Those were all in our backyard. I wish I had taken a picture of the landscaper's truck--the back was almost overflowing with leaves. He said he'd been there since mid-day. He finally left around 8pm. That's a lot of work for one guy.

So, what have I learned? Well, I really need to pay better attention--I need to listen when someone tells me a specific day they'll be showing up. That way I won't be surprised by stuff like this. I have learned that gas-powered lawn implements beat the crap out of electric implements. Big time. The drawback is that nasty gas smell. And I have learned that sometimes it is pretty satisfying to pay someone to do a job that you want done well. I walked around all weekend saying, "I love this yard."

Odd side note: It seems like every one of our neighbors took a cue from our yard work--for the rest of the weekend, all you could hear were lawn-mowers, weed-whackers and leaf-blowers on our block. I must say, it's pretty nice to live in an area where the folks really take pride in their homes.