Let there be GRASS!

It's amazing how SO VERY grateful you can be for something that you would just take for granted in normal circumstances. Case in point -- when we moved into our new house in November of '08, it had been vacant for at least 3 or 4 months, during the hot summer. That meant we didn't have a lawn, we had straw. And an ugly slope that the previous owner's dogs had torn up. Plus lots of trash and just old junk that they left behind.

(Here's the photo I took the first time I toured this house, complete with my assertions that we could work with it! And it IS big. The state of it was pretty sad then, but was REALLY sad when it stayed pretty much the same for a year and a half!)

Here's the before photo from a couple of weeks ago. We had taken out all the grass and removed all the old netting underneath.

We had a great gardener and his team come out and till everything, work on the slope, plant some trees, and put in new sod. And here she is now!!

I just can't believe the difference! It looks like an actual backyard now, one that if we had had it from the beginning, I know we wouldn't appreciate it nearly as much.

Here is the slope before (you can see we had taken out the grass, but some had started to grow back in because of all the rain we had gotten. Talk about counter-productive! :)

And here is the slope after, with the lemon, orange, avocado and pomegranate trees! They're little, yes, but they'll be great one day. We can't wait.

And once the kind of flowers we want are available, we're going to have some hanging flowers planted on the slope that will cascade over the wall, so that you can't see as much of the stone on the bottom. I love that it will be filled with color!

Now I'm happy that me and the boys can go outside and play like this:

Needless to say, we're stoked. We've been playing outside everyday since we got the go-ahead. And the boys are just in heaven. :)

Me too, kids. Me too.