But anyhow! Yes, all of this happened around the end of July, and I basically fell in love with our house all over again. It's been a long road for me and the Duchess.
Earlier this month, DH and I used a Sunday when the kids were out with their grandparents to our advantage by visiting a local nursery to buy new shrubs. We grabbed 4 japonica waxleaf shrubs to put underneath each window. This picture was taken a couple of days after we planted them.
Funny story about the shrubs in the front of our house.. get ready.
When we saw the listing photo, it was a picture that was taken months before. From what I recall, the house was listed about 2 years before we saw the listing, and the owners decided to rent the house instead of sell it, which is how it ended up back on the market. The photo of the exterior with full-grown boxwoods carefully clipped into pretty rounded shapes was not what we saw the day we looked at the house in real life. Instead, the shrubs were all ridiculously overgrown, blocking the front walkway, and really just fucking with the overall aesthetic of the exterior.
Literally less than 2 weeks after we moved into the house, we used a friend's heavy equipment to rip out every last one of those shrubs. Including a Japanese maple. (Granted, the Japanese maple was ugly as sin to me, #sorrynotsorry, but I wish now that I had lived with it a little longer. Especially since everyone gasps at me when I tell them this little factoid.) Almost every last fucking shrub on our property was torn from the earth (minus the side of the house where our crepe myrtle tree lies, and the adjacent burning bush and euonymus goldens, and my beloved hydrangea by the AC unit). Because I am a moron, and because my husband feared telling me to fuck off and leave the landscaping alone.
I dreamed of peony bushes and hydrangeas in the front of the house. Pops of color everywhere. Nevermind the fact that I had no fucking clue what I was doing with plants, and I was in La La Land about owning a house and believing everything would be perfect.
The only great thing about this stupid decision was that DH and I planted grass seed on the side of our front walk closest to the road, which one was lined with overgrown shrubs, and we love how this opened up the front yard and made our house look more welcoming than it seemed with a row of shrubs blocking your view of the steps.
Anyhow, back to the tragedy of this decision, over the years I've tried planting things in the front of the house. I picked up 3 Japanese hollies and put them down on the left-hand side as foundation/hedge shrubs, only for 2 of them to die by the end of the year. The only one that survived was a fat little fucker on the left-hand side of the front, closest to the garage; and as it turned out, they were dwarf varieties, so this little guy would widen out like crazy, but he never got taller than he was when I planted him. In front of the Japanese hollies, I put in pink azaleas. They're still alive, but they're certainly not thriving like I hoped. They're kind of small, and I would have hoped to have seen more growth by now.
With the addition of the japonica waxleaf shrubs, DH and I tried our best to work around the little fat holly that remained, but in terms of proper spacing for nutrient availability, as well as the overall even-ness of the way our yard looked, the holly had to go. We tried to rip it out gently so that I could replant it, but DH and I ended up having to hack it from the ground in pieces. And that was after I pruned it back to make it more manageable.
Honestly, I was sad about it. For days afterwards, I would find little sprigs of holly from it that would drift across the yard or the driveway when I was going to work in the morning, or watering the plants in the evening. Jesus, I'm a plant killer.
Weeks later, though, things seem to be going okay with the yard. The japonica waxleaf plants are looking good. One of them has leaves that are turning a little brown, but I'm not sure if that's to be expected? or if I'm watering them a little too much? I'm hoping they make it.
This past week, DH and I added 2 knockout roses to the left-hand side of our house that is plant barren. I'm hoping they'll grow quickly.
My hydrangea on the other side is doing well, too! Back in April, she was looking rough. I was worried that maybe she was dying and I'd have to face facts: I suck at gardening or plant care of any kind. But surprisingly, she's looked beautiful this summer! Not much flowering, but certainly large and plenty green. I tried to sprinkle some bone meal down at the base of the plant, but she's so huge, I couldn't get it under there. The little bit that I might have gotten down there doesn't seem to be doing a damn thing, but it's only been 2 weeks, so I guess I should chill. I read that phosphorus will help with hydrangea flowering.
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