We Bought A Jungle.

You know the movie “We Bought A Zoo” – well, we bought a jungle.  And while my husband may be as handsome as Matt Damon and could handle anything nature throws at him.  I am no Scarlett Johanson, so showing up here with my lack of rack and pin-up looks wouldn’t help me a bit in this situation.

Listen, by no means am I a princess who can’t hold her own outside.  At the same time, by no means am I a chick who would enjoy camping out in a tent.  Consider me completely in between.  I’ll gladly tackle yard work, and smoosh a spider that is smaller than a pin.  A spider the size of a penny will find its new home inside of my vacuum, and using tools that could cause a limb of mine to be cut off is seriously avoided.

When we purchased our home we were completely enamored by the wooded affect our entire area as.  Come to find, our city prides themselves on their tree preservation.  It is quite calming to drive through each street and see the greenest grass-covered in the most mature trees.  Most developments these days are houses upon houses upon land that has been stripped of everything it once had.  Here, it is as if they built the houses around the trees.  It’s really something to see.

 At the time of closing, there was not a leaf to be found.  Our minds fantasized about their potential plush leaves that were to be in weeks to come.  Remember the scene in Father of the Bride, where Steve Martin is cruising down the street during his mid-life crisis, and the streets are perfectly lined with trees and he pulls into his perfectly landscaped home, that has always been my fantasy.  Not the mid-life crisis, I’m sure that’ll come eventually though, too.

 Day by day, bud by bud, we slowly started to see what our yard at to offer.

It’s truly a beautiful mess.  A front and back yard that has not been tended to in YEARS.  I have adjusted very quickly to having a yard that is covered with plants, weeds and trees.  Ants that come in sizes I thought to only see in a jungle, and spider webs gracing every branch to take their giant bodies back and forth between trees.  I duck, I squeal, I squish and squirm the entire time I am outside.

To put this into better perspective, this is our front yard just as we started the front porch project.

Now you see her …

Now you don’t …

The trees are in full effect.  Which results in an exceptional cool house (have not even thought about air conditioning yet).  I love the trees, do not get me wrong here, but the lack of curb appeal is so low you might as well crawl into the sewer.

I pulled into our drive the other day, where our drive meets our backyard, and it all hit me at once on how we needed to get moving or else our yard was weeks away from turning into a scene on Jumanji.

Father of the Bride or Jumanji? Hm, which one would you prefer? As much as my kids love Jumanji (it’s on replay most weeks) we would prefer to not roll the dice – before we know it sprout a tail, and start swinging from the branches.

I went straight into my trunk, where I had a lovely gift bag awaiting me.  My mother must have known what a joke our yard was going to turn into because she put clippers + gardening gloves into my mother’s day bag (Thanks Mom!)

Set the kids up with some toys, and I faced what I thought were bushes, turns out they were just weeds as tall as me.

Hours later of clipping, standing back at where I parked my car a few hours prior, I felt SO much better about the direction this yard was going.

Our back yard a few weeks ago, prior to its growth spurt.

As you can see, it is all over grown.  The trees fill in every nook and cranny possible.  It is a picture perfect scene for us, we wanted mature trees.  Now we just have to decide what should stay, and what needs to go.

We have a handful of trees that have seen their day, and will have to come down eventually.  Sooner rather than later, and hopefully we can win the lottery following to fill our pockets back up yet again.  These trees in the back right corner of our yard though are so pretty, I can see a sweet little play house for the kids nestled underneath their branches, so I know they will stay.

The rest of the yard currently is in a half alive half dead state.  We have twists and turns of dirt mounds covered in dying ivy, and grass that could use more than just a bit of seed.

Our goal is to have the front and back yard ready for grass seed this fall.  We know better than to set our goals to high – this is a massive project! The random circle patches of what were ivy will be gone, or nicely shaped.  We are not sure if we want them there or not.  We will be taking down the smaller skinny trees, in hopes of having a larger playing field for the kids to play sports in.

We’ve got high hopes! But this back yard is just screaming to be an oasis.