I’ve called this year our demolition year, and it definitely has been. We’ve ripped out enough 50 year old shrubs to make a pile big enough for someone to live in. Good thing about ripping stuff out is it is cheap, even if it is labor intensive. Landscape installation can get quite expensive fast, and we do not have an adequate budget. As a guideline, total landscape installation can cost 10-30% of the value of the house.. It’s not a crazy amount: although doing it yourself and over time will reduce the cost. Hopefully, for a fraction of the cost and a lot of labor we’ll still get some good results.

This fence line had a ton of volunteer maples, and half-dead bridal wreath spireas.

After lots of pruning: I wouldn’t mind if some of the spireas came back, but I don’t care if they don’t too.

Right now thought, the landscape is a bundle of hopeful dreams and currently a lot of projects in the making. It looks awful. I’m letting weeds grow and grass die. But I think the difference between what I’m doing and a neglected landscape is that I have a vision for mine, and I’m letting weeds grow and grass die because I’m working toward something that will be better. I understand that weeds are better than bare soil, that I don’t want to waste the valuable resource of water on a non-wanted lawn. The landscape is progressing, even if it is nowhere close to where I want it to be. And we finally got rid of all the garbage that had piling in the backyard.

In the middle of mowing the back half of our yard. Everything growing here is weeds.

All done. Notice the big pile of shrubs on the left, and the old shed that has transformed into a storage area–now with stuff we want instead of garbage. Much better than before.