Grass? What grass?

When we moved into our house, landscaping was not our first priority. A year and some odd months later, we are finally getting around to it. The people who previoulsy owned the house were kind enough to cover 75% of the front yard in one of the toughest and most prolific plants - ivy. Yes, it could have been worse - it could have been kudzu, or dirt, or straight concrete. But we thought the ivy was pretty bad. Not to mention it was killing the trees and creeping down the street.

Our backyard is mostly trees - we have counted 75+ back there, mostly tall pines. Thus, most of the yard is pine straw. This suits us just fine, but there is a small perimeter around the patio where "grass" was growing. It was mostly weeds, and patchy at best, from years of neglect.

So in January we got 7 trees taken down from our front yard. Some were dead and just waiting to fall on the neighbor's house. Others were just hiding our house. We got the stumps ground, and the pine chips from that have remained in their little piles on top of the ivy - for 9 months now. Let's just say we aren't going to win the "Most Beautiful Lawn" award from Home & Garden any time soon. But the potential is there, I promise! Our house looks much better (you can actually see it now, so that helps) and once grass covers the front -- not dirt and weeds -- it will look even better.

Now that the weather is starting to cool down (in theory at least), we are starting to tackle both the front and the back. Luckily for us, Mikey is a lawn expert :) so we have relied heavily on his advise and equipment (thanks!) We are starting with the back, and leaving most of the work in the front to the experts!

(These pics are some of the "before" pictures of the backyard. Once something actually grows I will put up "afters"!)