Corner Lot

One of the draws of our house was that it was situated on a corner lot. There are only 4 corner lots in this subdivision that are interior (the others are exterior and open onto a busy road). This is what the house looked like when we bought it:



I want to draw your attention to the bed of pine straw in the foreground surrounding the street sign. The builder also put pine straw all around the permimeter of the house in "flower beds." I'm pretty sure it was just because they were too cheap to sod the 3/4 of it where they didn't plant "builder bushes." Anyway, we did nothing with these "flower beds" because I was 8 months pregnant with 2.0 (now known as Oscar) by the time we moved in, and then he was born, and then it was fall and Eli started a new job. All to say that the "flower beds" soon became a slumber spot for the ugliest, nastiest weeds, and the neighbors loathed us because our nasty corner "flower bed" caused all the property values on the block to drop (I'm exaggerating, but it was really bad--so bad that I didn't take a picture because I didn't want there to be evidence).

The last weekend in March, the in-laws came up to see the grandchildren and to also lend a hand in getting the yard ready for summer. I had been to the OHS plant sale the week before and gotten some flowers and vegetables, but didn't have a plan for them. I had also scoped out the mulch business in town at the request of my father-in-law. They brought a tiller and a truck, and also tons of lillies and irises that they had thinned from family members' gardens, and a few crape myrtle seedlings and treelets (yes, I made that word up) from outside their kitchen window. I hate being outside in the direct sunlight (shady spots are best for this girl's blindingly white complexion), but that day I spent all day outside helping. I took the truck (first time I've ever driven a pickup) to get mulch, and ended up getting two loads--one of decomposed black stuff to mix in with the tilled clay in the flower bed by the street sign, and another to put on top of the flower beds all around the house. When I got back with the second load, the Beavers had already planted lillies and irises into what had earlier been the weed bed on the corner, and we covered it with real mulch. The lillies, having been dug up for a few days, looked pretty sad, but we had hope that they would "perk up." Here's what the corner looked like when we were done:



Six weeks later, things were starting to look more alive--the lillies weren't all laying down and I couldn't remember what it had looked like earlier. It doesn't look too different, but it does look alive.



Well, after Elsie's birthday, we started to see flower pods shoot up (I learned that plants grow when you water them...AMAZING!) and had the first of our blooms. So far, these are the different varieties of lilly in our yard and I think there's at least two more:







I'm amazed and underwhelmed by the lillies. They are beautiful, but they only bloom for one day.

I just ran outside to see if there were any new blooms, and took yet another picture of the outside of the house to leave you with on this Saturday morning of a long weekend. Imagine the mailman driving by right then and sounds of a little blond girl with wet blond curls screaming and laughing in the backyard as she plays with her new sprinkler and her pool, but most importantly her daddy.

Cheers.