Waiting.....

We had our appraisal and FHA inspection done late last week - a couple of minor repairs to do and everything is going along just fine.  Basically, all the hurdles have been passed and now we are just waiting for the closing day! Because we are breaking our lease here, we have to cooperate to find a new tenant so this weekend was big cleaning day - Dale worked in the yard and I scrubbed the house.  An ad will go in this week and hopefully we find someone to take over the place.  We can close early if we do find a tenant, but what we'd really like is someone who wants to move in November, which would give us a little time to get the bathroom finished so it is functional for when we move in!



 I was telling Dale that I can't wait to get clipping on the trees - there are 2 avocado trees, a lemon tree and a bottlebrush -all of them completely overgrown. I'd like to get them whipped into shape - although we may end up removing the bottlebrush and lemon eventually (since they're where we'd like a pool to be!).












One of the avocados is large  & gorgeous, the other is small and sprawling and will probably go.



This is the nice big one---->








The other kind of tree we have is a bottlebrush, which is something that's indigenous to Australia and is pretty common here in SoCal -- They can have lovely red flowers all over, but the one we have is terribly overgrown and needs to be cut back quite a bit so it will bloom.  It does have a nice weeping habit, so maybe I can make it more manageable.  These are almost the only flowers on the tree, which should be pretty much covered with them.










Finally, the lemon tree which is a huge mess.  The only fruits are way too high to reach, it needs to be topped and shaped, which would mean no lemons for awhile, but it's a hot mess as is, so it needs some serious trimming.


Trimming the trees is not a big priority, but the sooner I get them trimmed, the earlier they can start to bear fruit and flowers, so I'd like to get to work on them soon!  You can see in this picture of the lemon tree how dead the yard is -- it needs LOTS of work, but just trimming the trees and raking the dead leaves will go a long way.