We're giving our UGLY backyard a makeover!!

[joanofark]

Hmm, I can't think of a word to describe it... how about "WoW" Yeah it looks like you have TONS of space and I think it has a lot of potential!! Just a lot of work, haha. Oh, and good job on explining us "Rednecks" LOL

My yard's pretty boring.....

[Daisy and Delilah]

Sarah, From another Floridian.....just about everybody's back yard looks like that about now. I work on my yard as if I'm expecting Better Homes and Gardens to stop by and to no avail this time of the year. Most of my plants are brown(hit with cold), I have leaves all over the yard, and just a general appearance of doom. The grass is all brown because it's dormant etc. Your yard has great potential. I keep my fences painted because they will all turn green if I don't. I even painted the back stoop(if you will) and it turned green through the paint before I treated it. That was during a period of alot of rain and humidity. Who can fight the humidity in Florida? I can't wait to see your makeover pictures and I know you guys will have a blast doing it.

p.s. LOL I have a hot tub on the back screened porch but I don't keep water in it

[.sarah]

You should call ones of those home make-over shows and see if they would do it!

LOL. All of the ones on HGTV are usually only for Californians. Extreme Makeover? We're not disabled enough. That's a good thing though ... I think

Wow, lol..Im laughing cause it dont looks as dumpy as my brothers place here.lol.lol.lol..and the only time they get it cleaned up which is about evey 8 years is to get a loan..this is real red neck acre here..smashed cars, olf furniture, and oh wow..your place needs some work. but really I wont even take pic of this place to show you and my nephew has been working for 2 weeks to get it cleaned upcause they want to sell..When my brother gets aggraved at his family (they do nothing in the way of clean up onlyhim) he throws evey thing out..lol.lol..good or bad..out it goes..lol..I will have to find some place else to live , I have lived her free for 10 years, and I go out and pick up trash , and dont make a dnet..yours will be a job but it can be done if ever one is willing to pitchin and work at it..

LOL ... yeah I've seen worse. It's just really bad because up until a few years ago we had a gorgeous yard, but my mom has gotten health problems and an increase workload so she can't work out in the yard anymore. So I'm taking it over now. Hopefully it won't get like this again ... or worse

Awww, thanks for the explanation!!
My hubby wouldn't stand this for a second. Once we had our new house built, he couldn't wait to start working on his garden!! Well, he truly has green fingers, and made our garden beautiful! Do something about all the trash, plant lots of flowers and bushes, it is worth it!!

Holy cow that's gorgeous

Ok, Sarah, you have my dream backyard!!! Who cares about the mess...

You have the fence, the shade, the SPACE..

Everything I want!

Shade - we have too much of it. Well, not really, but the trees "shed" too much! I must admit, we have a decent sized yard, but for around here it truly is small. I have the smallest yard out of everyone I know. We have one of the smallest yards in the neighborhood. We only live on 1/4 acre but I guess that's a big yard to some people. We wish we had 3-5 acres.

[.sarah]

You are so funny Sarah. Being from Florida myself I feel for you. I live in the country myself in an area pretty "rednecky". However, if that is your one "little" oak tree, I have got ya beat. I have large oak trees in my yard which prohibit the growth of lush green grass, no sunlight means no grass a growing. Combine that with Grant digging holes and we have quite the yard. We do have a nice patch of grass in a few areas that do get sunlight but that's not the whole yard.

Back to your thread, I am sure your yard will look fantastic once it's finished.

No grass? Did you look at the pictures? We have zero grass. Zippo. Nada. Nothing. Thing is, if we had grass, we wouldn't mow it and then it'd really be a redneck yard! So it's probably a good thing the tree is there. I think that picture makes it look small. It's a huuuge tree. I'll have to measure the diameter and see how big it is. We need a permit to cut it down.

We're lucky that our dogs don't dig. Mandy used to, but when Buttons quit digging she quit to. She also quit digging out of our yard once he went blind. So she was kind of the follower with him.

Sarah, From another Floridian.....just about everybody's back yard looks like that about now. I work on my yard as if I'm expecting Better Homes and Gardens to stop by and to no avail this time of the year. Most of my plants are brown(hit with cold), I have leaves all over the yard, and just a general appearance of doom. The grass is all brown because it's dormant etc. Your yard has great potential. I keep my fences painted because they will all turn green if I don't. I even painted the back stoop(if you will) and it turned green through the paint before I treated it. That was during a period of alot of rain and humidity. Who can fight the humidity in Florida? I can't wait to see your makeover pictures and I know you guys will have a blast doing it.

p.s. LOL I have a hot tub on the back screened porch but I don't keep water in it

We decided against staining the fence for one reason: it's HUGE! lol

We haven't had water in our hot tub for years lol.

[.sarah]

What I did today: My mom and I went to Home Depot and bought $250 worth of stuff.

I put up a cute white picket fence for garden #1. This is just going to be a flower garden. In the back of the yard we're going to build a 3-4 ft fence and have a flower & vegetable garden. No flowers until April, which makes me really ansy! I think I may go buy some fake flowers because I'm dying to know what it will look like


I layed out 2 bails of pine straw.


Got the leaves out of the pool. Holy CRAP this was hard and time consuming! There was like 4x as many leaves as I originally thought.

A message to the dogs (especially dirty little Novey) ...

New toy box for the dogs. This is probably better than letting the toys rot out in the yard ... agree?


Planned for tomorrow: cutting down some of the branches on the oak tree and some other trees (we have too many darn trees!). My dad will do that stuff. I'm gonna clean the patio furniture and put the new cushions on that we bought today. We're also going to set up a really nice concrete bench that we bought today.

Then I'm going to the adoption booth at Petsmart to volunteer and then I'm taking the dogs to the dogpark with my friend and her dog (who is Nova's new boyfriend ).

[Alysser]

Poor Sarah! It looks better! I think. Can't wait to see the makeover.

[Daisy and Delilah]

It looks like it's coming along nicely! It's gonna look great when you finish it. Keep showing us progress-you'll inspire me. You can plant some flowers now that are tolerant if you want to. Some pansies or dianthus would be pretty and the stores are full of them. They're great in the cool weather(even though it was pretty warm today )!!

[poofy]

your doing great..cant wait to see more results

[anna_66]

Sarah, I have to say...you've definitely made me laugh this morning
We've always thought our back yard was a redneck back yard too (especially now with the snow fence up where the pool used to be and where all the mud is at least now if we get snow it will block it from drifting onto the porch..HAHA!)

Sounds like your off to a good start, I can't wait to see how it looks when you all done

[.sarah]

LOL! Anna, that picture is too funny.

We worked in the yard a lot last Saturday but since then it has been rain rain rain! I'm going to a dog show this weekend so I'm not going to be able to work on the yard. Hopefully the rain will stop by next week. Stupid Florida