Getting closer to closing!

We met at the escrow company last Thursday to sign a pile of papers, looks like we may close on Tuesday.  We did the last walk-through on Friday (to be sure it's in the same condition as when we agreed to buy the house), and got some last-minute paperwork signed and forwarded.  So hopefully we are in the final stretch.

One of the things we will have to do a lot is get the back yard looking decent.  The plants that are there are overgrown and not all that attractive, the grass is dead and the trees are a mess.  So I know I want to do some work to get the yard looking good, but I don't want to spend a fortune on plants.  I'm a big fan of Freecycle, a web service to get rid of things without throwing them away - I've gotten some great plants from both there and on the 'free' section of craigslist.  

These succulents were a craigslist score, and the cannas and the phormium were from Freecycle.  We've also got a bucket of horsetail that I've culled from the overgrown beds here at the rental house we are in - there was a straggler tree that needed to be cut down and in order to do that, I had to clear out some of the overgrown plants.  I ran out of pots and so it's in an old stucco bucket! On the front porch, I've got some taro plants, more succulents and a rhododendron.  We also picked up some rose bushes, but they're looking a little less than healthy right now - they might have been dug up earlier than they should have by the people we got them from.

Someone listed some agapanthus this week, which is one of my favorite plants, but I have no where to put it right now!  But I'm going to contact them later this week to see if they still have some left --

One of the best things about living here in California is that plants grow beautifully -- and I should be able to get my yard landscaped for next to nothing.  Too bad we weren't already moved in - last week, someone posted 3000 sq feet of brand new sod that they'd used for an event - it was placed in the morning and they needed someone to come pick it up that night at the end of their event! Hoping that I can make a good score like that when I'm ready for it!