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Sunday, June 27, 2010

True Confessions: In the Yard


I feel the need to come clean. Everyone is always commenting on my beautiful yard. You know, the one I show in photos on my blog, like here and here and here.


Wouldn't you just love to come sit on this bench and sip some pink lemonade with me? Or some good southern sweet tea?

So here's the thing: first of all, the only pink lemonade we have around here is the kind that comes from a little packet labeled "Kool-Aid." And I don't really know how to make sweet tea. I was raised in New York, remember?

And this pretty bench area is right out in the middle of an incredibly hot patch of the yard. I just cropped the rest of it out. If you look closely, you can see poison ivy peeping out from under the mulch and mosquitoes hanging in dense clouds.

While you're sitting on the bench, sipping Kool-Aid, you can look off to your right and see the garden in all its summer glory:


Or you can turn you head to the left and see our pretty little shed that we were once going to make into a playhouse:


If you're tired of slapping mosquitoes off your legs, you can walk around to the ivy-covered woods in back. One of the things that attracted us to this house 10 years ago was all the pretty dogwoods and the English ivy, which gave the house a nice cottage-ish look:




Come around to the side of the house (watch out for those huge mole holes and the dog poop!), where you'll see the jasmine-covered arch, which is so lovely in the spring. This used to be a jungle of blackberry brambles, but we cleared it out one year. Like maybe eight years ago or so. I think there's a bench in there that you can sit on if you can find it:


From there you can see the side of the house there, the one that faces our retired neighbors who mow twice each week (with a very big riding mower) and use that thing called a "weed-eater" and even a "leaf blower" more than once a year. They have told us many times how much they enjoy this view of our house:


And from there you can come around to the front, where hundreds of commuters pass every day and admire our Curb Appeal:


So please, don't be so hard on yourselves about your own floundering flowerbeds. Because what you just saw, my friends, is the reality of In the Yard at SmallWorld. And why I will continue to crop out the thorns and focus on this:


Linked up on Outdoor Wednesday at a Southern Daydreamer

19 comments:

  1. Oh, that is EXACTLY how our yard appears...LOVELY...

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  2. Glad we are not the only ones with a less-than-perfect yard. I think ours is worse, though. Right now in the front yard we have the addition of scaffolding that we borrowed to repair our roof back in March, just a few days before Rich broke his hip. It looks so lovely now, with all of the lavender blooming around it. And you really don't want to know how gigantic the Canadian thistles were that Rich and I dug up yesterday in the back yard:).

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  3. well, thank you for that. it is so easy on a blog, whether intentionally or not, to paint a rosy picture of yard/family/life/whatever. i have to remind myself of that when i read other people's blogs and think their yards/families/lives/whatever are so much lovelier than mine. then i have to go back and read my own blog posts and see whether i might be giving that same sort of impression to others!

    my yard actually looks pretty good-- but i can't take a lot of credit for that; its the hubz who rides the mower and whacks the weeds. parts of the house, though, are a different story. i've actually taken here's-what-it-really-looks-like pics for just such a post, but have never gotten around to actually doing one.

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  4. Thank you so much I don't feel so bad about my weeds and semi planted garden.

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  5. I love it!!! :-) I have a whole side of my house without shutters because "it doesn't face anything." Yeah, right. We were just too cheap to buy more and didn't want to paint them. I have my own personal tree guy with a hundred chainsaws and a chipper and *I* have had a dead tree in my yard for 3 years. ::sigh::

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  6. Love it! I'll be posting before and after photos of my pathetic flower bed Tuesday. It's still pathetic but it's slightly prettier. ;-)

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  7. Thank you so much! I feel better about our yard. :-) Don't you love the crop feature? :-)

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  8. ha ... like I don't strategically place myself for every photo op, too ... and you did note that the strawberry I ate tonight was mulled, right?

    still LOVE smallworld

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  9. the lack of water for the strawberries wasn't intentional, I hope... I was there for the strawberry patch discussion a few weeks ago!

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  10. Thank you for exposing the lovely and not so much with the photos on you blog. We love to see and linger on the beauty. But it is a truer reflection of our live to see - and to live with, and in- it all! I love the lense lets us find at least a moment to pause in the midst of all there is left to do! Thanks for sharing!

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  11. Thanks for making me smile, Sarah. What a fun post.

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  12. Thanks for sharing the less spectacular parts of your yard. I have been imagining you kind of like a green-thumbed Snow White bounding about your yard with flowers and perfect growth following you wherever you go. Thanks for bringing me back down to reality, though you still have beautiful flowers and I'm sure most of your yard is quite lovely.

    Samantha

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  13. You don't know how to make sweet tea? I feel the need to send help immediately. I think I posted the directions once.

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  14. I just love this!!! We're so stinking hot here that much of our lawn looks the same. We suffer from two-faced syndrome. The FRONT face of the house is tidy, but the BACK face, notsomuch.

    Wouldn't it be nice to be able to crop the weeds out of our lives as easily as we crop them out of our pictures?

    Thanks for making me smile this hot afternoon... as I sit looking out my BACK window sipping on my Crystal Light lemonade.

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  15. I just happened upon your blog this morning and had to say - so funny! I know what you mean about this stuff. But really you do things and post things as you do them :)

    I do that with my house but believe me I've posted some horrifying befores too. like my sons room?

    And Im so not kidding.

    Everyone has these space :) well almost everyone...everyone I know anyway

    Tracy

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  16. I want your shed! Some chicken wire on the window and you are set for Chickens!!!
    I just find your blog! Love it! A yard is a lot of work! I totally understand....So mmuch work it is like another job.
    Come follow me back and say hi!
    XO
    Frenchy

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  17. LOL LOL LOL.... oh my goodness that was just the most honest, funniest thing I have read in ages... All of our gardens are just like that. Kudos to you for expressing it. Besides I never take pictures of my gardens and I never say I do either, I run around like a maniac taking pictures of everyone else's beautiful gardens... Thanks for making my day! Seriously, thank you!

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  18. LOL ~ What a great post! It's so good to know others have similar yard issues. But I think focusing on the beauty is the only way to go. :)

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  19. Oh, I love this post! Although our yard could rival yours - it's JUST grass. That's it. No flowers, nothing. LOL

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