Let me start by saying (or reminding you if you’ve actually been reading my blog) that I am from Manhattan.  Born and raised.  I had zero exposure to gardening.  I don’t even remember having house plants or to power tools.  But I did live near Central Park.   When I got married and moved to burbs, I started to dabble in a little gardening.  I even had a landscaping wedding shower and my friends helped me plant things at our last house, but things really took off 4 years ago when we moved here.  I bought my first wheel barrow after buying this house.  And this is how the adventure began:

Did you get all that??  Let me try to explain a little more with some pictures.  These shots were taken the day of our home inspection in April 2009.  I was NOT pleased with the state of the landscaping in front of the house.  But that would be an easy fix compared to everything else.

Our house was on a corner lot, or so we thought.  There was a dead-end road next to the house and when we put in our offer we had no idea the road was private property.  It didn’t come up until we were getting our survey and title.  We were told we would own half the road and that our neighbor owned the other half.  Weird.  But hubby and I thought the road was cool.  We envisioned our kids learning to ride their tricycles, roller skate or just bounce a ball on it.   And because we didn’t have a level surface anywhere else, we were excited.

Are you with me so far?  Walking down that private road, you now start to get a look into the heavily wooded backyard.  Let me point out the truly bizarre double staircase coming off the back porch.  One side had a fence around it.  I didn’t get it.  I tore it off as soon as we moved in. 

We moved into our house with a 3 month old, 20 month old, and a 7 year old.   That first summer was slow!  But I did tear out some shrubbery and tidy things up.   And watch a lot of Yard Crashers.

The only real work we did in 2009 was hiring someone to take down some trees, including the one right next to the screened porch.  We also had these two trees removed and the stumps ground.  But we later had to have the stumps ground down 2 more times, because we excavated that much dirt from this area.  Craziness!