WHISTLE WHILE WE WORK

 Eric and I bought our little house about a year and a half ago.  We had already lived in there for a few years before our landlord told us she'd like to sell and wanted to give us first-refusal.  Since we'd recently been looking into buying a house, and Burlington's rental market is a total nightmare, we weighed our options, and in the end decided to buy.  It's a tiny house, and needs lots of work, but it has a great big yard which is hard to find in downtown Burlington.  We've never really given our yard much attention until it became OUR yard. . . so now the motivation is there.  Last summer the big project was removing a huge chunk of the asphalt driveway and filling it in with dirt then grass. . . who needs a driveway that can fit 5 cars??  This summer we've decided to increase the yard's privacy by adding plantings and a new fence. 

 

Last weekend we got a big jump on both.  Thanks to a grant by a local bank my little neighborhood was given 20 new trees!  We helped plant the Japanese lilac tree that now lives in front of our house.  The city of Burlington has received a "Tree City USA" award from the National Arbor Day Foundation every year since 1991.  So cool. 

Below our neighbors are watching a demo on how to properly plant a new tree.

Eric was away for the weekend so my Dad and I decided to get in some bonding time while he was gone and get the fence up.  Eric and my goal was privacy while not looking like we had decided to barricade ourselves from our neighbors. . . I was psyched to discover that Lowe's sells 8' wide pre-made fencing which we just needed to reinforce (it's pretty cheapo. . . but what do you expect for $26) and cut to size.  A nice green wood-stain made it look just how i'd hoped.

The fence pre-stain job. You can see our new Japanese lilac tree on the right!  

My lovely mom let me pillage her garden for overgrown perennials to help fill in the space next to the fence in our backyard.  It had always been weeds. 

Thanks to Front Porch Forum I got a bunch of perennials  from a sweet neighbor.  These succulent looking things (I have no knowledge of plant names) will completely fill in the space between the fence and the cement within a year.  

 

Eric is kneeling where there used to be tons-o-asphalt driveway.