Nothing like a party to make you clean up your yard, right?  That and the fact that we finally had some good weather that let us get outside and play in the dirt.  Well we had a lot to do in the front and back yard to get it looking nice again..

Apparently if you don’t rake up leaves for 3 months, they stay there and cover the entire yard.  Lesson learned.  Luckily I reaped the benefits of Hunter working in the yard while I was still in Georgia for Christmas.  The back yard was the worst — you couldn’t even see the grass, but now the leaves are up, the grass is cut, and we have a bunch of bags of leaves on the street, ready to recycle.

The flower bed in the front right of our house was pretty big, but only had the bushes and tree olive plant in it, so I decided to plant a bunch of small kale plants in front of it.  I did 9 bunches of 3 plants in 3 different colors.  You can find all the kale varieties at Lowes out front.  The bed looks much better with more plants, and I like the different colors!

So I’ve gotten a little kale happy lately, and planted another variety of kale in the front by our sidewalk, around the Mexican heather (the 3 plants that are slightly covered by pine straw).  The kale plants looked so cute, and I couldn’t help myself –> That’s something I never thought I’d say, man I’m getting old.  These will last through the winter, and then hopefully the other plants will come back for spring!

Next came the beds.  The flower beds were filled with mulch when we moved in and we had plans to eventually rake it all out and replace the mulch with pine straw.  That turned into a project to get done before our NYE party, which was probably bad timing — another lesson learned.

There was so. much. raking.  And then, even more raking and sweeping it all into more bags.  What a mess –>

Between the front, side, and back yard, we had quite a few beds that were down to their bare bones and ready for pine straw.  Martinez Landscaping was great and delivered 25 bales of pine straw (in the rain nonetheless) a few hours after I called them up.

Then came the fun part.. laying all the pine straw.  Since Hunter had to work late at the end of the year, I spent a few hours across 3 days laying all the pine straw in all of our newly raked beds.  I’m not gonna lie, it was a pain.  It rained, it was chilly, at times it was hot and sweaty, but I got pretty great at laying it and finished the job on the morning of New Years Eve.

I was pretty happy with the result and think the pine straw looks much better than the old mulch!  And yes, those are Christmas lights on the tree in the back that I’ve decided to keep up year round (because they were hard to put up).

PS- The pansies in my planters and hanging baskets are still doing great, and should continue to do well through the winter when it will be time for another yard revamp for spring!