Yard Work Day!

It's been absolutely beautiful this week, so we took advantage of that and worked on getting some yard work done.  Dale woke up this morning and said, "I'm cutting that tree down on the corner of the house." So that was the project for the day.  Here's a video of the tree coming down:

The neighbors have been anxious to get us to get this tree down, too - it leaves a lot of crap on their car and it's just unsightly.  This afternoon as we got ready to cut it down, she came by and said, "Oh, I remember when that tree was just a seedling - and I've wished I had just pulled it up years ago when the house was vacant!"  We do, too - but now it down and cut up.

So here's a shot of the house when we were doing the inspection, and how it looks today with the tree down:

Our neighbors are also doing some landscaping - they've removed most of their front plantings and are in the process of painting their house.  Also this week, we (rather, Dale) removed more of the ivy from the tree in the front yard.  If we hadn't filled the trash cans, he probably would have taken it all down.  Now that it's dead and dry, it's shrunk and it's a little - just a little! - easier to get down.  Here's a progress photo:

Look! You can see a limb!






After we took down the tree and cut it up and hauled it into the back where we're storing firewood, we saw an ad on Craigslist for some more free plants that were already dug up, so we hopped in the car and filled the trunk with these nifty succulents:













There's a place by the back door that the water drains into - we planted a big patch of them there, leaving space for a bougainvillea - we plan to go pick one up tomorrow to plant there.  We'd like to train it up the posts. 

These are great little plants - aloe noblis.  We have a pile of them, the rest of them are planted behind the garage in a holding zone until we decide what to do with them down the line.

I also planted a few in the strip beside the driveway - I'd weeded this area yesterday and saw some little gaps here and there.  Here are a couple of the new succulents next to my favorite striped agave.












So - even though our backyard is far from beautiful, it's come a long way!  I took some shots to compare with the photos I had taken on the day we did our inspection:

This is our lemon tree, and the one below is a view of the bottlebrush tree, which is still a hot mess, but we'll get to it eventually.  The grass is still really patchy, but wow - compared to the total lack of anything but dirt back in September, well, it feels like a lush garden of eden!  All I know is, it's a great place to sit and relax while enjoying the great California weather!