it was a jungle out there: part 1

Before we go inside, let's talk about what we've done to the outside since it's summer and all. Let's start with a side view of the house when we bought it:

That huge ivy bed was totally blocking our adorable house and it was killing that wonderfully mature tree. It was so bad, hubs overheard some of our neighbors wondering when we were going to take the tree out (It leans a bit and looked even more menacing with all that ivy). And for even more fun, let's look at this INSANE photo we found on Google Maps of the house before it was redone (the people we bought it from were house flippers and did some major renovations):

CRAZY, right? Total haunted house. You can see how overgrown the yard was. They obviously did a ton of work, but there was still more to be done. We had an arborist come out to look at our trees to determine which were worth saving. Turns out all of them were fine, but we did need to get the ivy off. Hubs was a saint and faithfully worked on the ivy removal. He started by ripping up the bed (ivy actually comes up pretty easily, it's just time consuming). Then he borrowed a ladder from my Dad to get up as high as he could to remove the ivy from the tree (he used a prune saw). Here's what it looked like post-ivy removal in the fall:

Nothing made me happier than to see that ivy gone. Then we had True Timber come out in the winter (it's cheaper then because they don't have to deal with leaves) to prune the tree and remove the rest of the ivy:

Then we were left with a big dirt bed. We didn't want to plant grass until we were sure the ivy was gone (we sprayed the heaviest chemical we could find at Southern States), so we decided to do a big flower bed. I found some pretty pink flowers that matched our door and some lovely hostas to plant. Then I edged the bed (I actually like this part because it's like scultping) and spread some fresh mulch.

Ahh...much better, right? We also did some work to the flower beds on either side of the house, but I think that will be another post...this one is already too long!