Remember when John met his frog friend (well, technically his toad friend) here?
This time we made a new neighborhood acquaintance…
… a snaaaaaaake! We were skeeeeered, but not too scared to take a picture. Thankfully it was just a harmless garter snake.
Why were we outside? Yard work. Our exterior will need many small projects if it’s going to slowly transform the way our last house did — a process that took years. That taught us to break big tasks into bite-sized pieces. Here are a few outdoor projects we recently completed.
First: spray-paint the mailbox and house numbers with oil-rubbed bronze (ORB) to refresh their look.
The funniest part was when John brought the hot mailbox over using rubber pot holders because it had been sitting in the sun and was too hot to touch:
Up close, it definitely needed attention (and a good cleaning):
I wiped off bird droppings with a wet cloth and applied several thin, even coats of ORB spray paint. I also sprayed the rusted tops of the screws and our brass house numbers. For a drop cloth I used big black plastic bags I reuse for painting projects.
By the end of the day everything was dry and back in place. While I was up there I took a few shots of the flowers because people had asked for updates on how they’ve grown.
Here they are before, right after planting:
And here they are now, beside the freshly painted mailbox (we edited out the house numbers in the photo):
They’ve filled in nicely, surprisingly so — we only watered them once when we planted, and it’s been very hot. Wave petunias really seem to thrive.
Even Lord Squirrelio is enjoying the growing greenery:
We considered painting the mailbox post but like the weathered wood look. A landscape designer friend suggested not drawing attention to the post—keeping it neat so it doesn’t detract from the yard. For now we’ll leave it natural.
Back to why we’re “those neighbors.” Previously we admitted to having a mailbox problem before we weeded, laid down landscape fabric, planted flowers, mulched, and removed extra signs from the post. That was an embarrassing moment for us as new neighbors.
We also have a wild side yard that looks like it doesn’t belong to us — but it does. The whole area in this photo is our lot:
We tried to naturalize it to match a neighbor’s naturalized area, but it just looked messy and overgrown. A few neighbors even suggested we mow it before we got reported to the neighborhood association. Ouch. We admitted it wasn’t working as planned and decided to at least tidy the front strip to look less unkempt from the road.
That meant tackling very long, hard-to-mow grass. John managed it — not in five minutes, but with steady effort and a lot of stops to clear clumps from the mower.
Slowly but surely we transformed an overgrown embarrassment into a neater top strip that now reads as part of our lot while leaving the lower slope intentionally wild (less mowing and upkeep there).
We also planted three more fast-growing evergreens in the back to add privacy over time and to balance the plantings we put on the side of the house.
Next came some serious weeding. The soil here sprouts monstrous weeds — we pulled out dandelion-sized plants that looked like small shrubs. We want some areas to feel woodsy and naturalized, but these oversized weeds needed to go first.
Below is a partial checklist of outdoor projects we’ve completed and the ones still on the list. We like seeing progress by crossing items off:
- Weeded the side of the carport (done with some help)
- Limbed up the giant magnolia (done)
- Built a side patio (done)
- Weeded, mulched & planted the mailbox area (done)
- Planted three fast-growing evergreens on the side of the house for privacy (done)
- Made small porch updates (done)
- Upgraded the mailbox and house numbers with ORB (done)
- Planted three more evergreens in the back (done)
- Weeded side and back yard areas so trees can naturalize (done)
- Avoid snakes (ongoing)
- Transplant the tree that’s currently planted too close to the house
- Remove or transplant bushes that block the front walkway (in phases)
- Paint the front door
- Frame out the round porch columns
- Remove the scalloped porch header
- Build raised bed gardens in the back
- Add a wooden compost bin (we currently use a less attractive method)
In short, we’ll slowly tame the jungle in manageable phases:
Because honestly, you can barely see the porch right now.
How do you approach yard projects — gut and rebuild, or one small project at a time like us? Have you ever found a sneaky snake, a giant dandelion, or been asked by neighbors to mow? We’re still a little embarrassed, but making progress feels good.