weeds, weeds, and more weeds

My dad is a landscaper.  And an amazing one at that.  (Not that I'm biased or anything.)  The farm I grew up on was the home to fields of nursery stock.  I grew up pruning shrubs in the fields, weeding beds, helping plant cuttings, watching my dad draw amazing designs, and helping unload new plants when we would sometimes get a delivery.  Weeding was always one of my least favorite jobs.  Ugh...because around my house...there was an art to pulling weeds.  My dad dared me to yank a weed out of the ground and not get the roots...huge "no, no".  As my dad always says, "If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well."  In order to pull weeds "well" you must pull from the base of the weed slowly so that you get the roots and all...if not, it will just grow right back up.  I learned the art at a young age.

Well this leads me to a confession.  We landscaped our house last summer using my dad's design.  We were so thankful to give our house more curb appeal.

Before

After

It looked beautiful...for a year...and then I let the weeds take over.  Things got busy...and I prayed my dad would look past the forest of weeds that started taking over our front beds whenever he came over.  I just wasn't in the mood for a, "Cait...you need to pull those weeds" reminder.  I'm not exaggerating when I say that some of the weeds were getting taller than the shrubs and trees in our landscaping.  So sad.

Multiply this pile by 5...the number of weeds I pulled.

This all came to an end last week when I beautified our beds, freed them of the fog of weeds, and allowed our gorgeous landscaping to shine once again, claiming their amazing curb appeal all over again.  My dad was proud, my hubby was happy I couldn't stand it anymore and took care of it so he didn't have to, and our landscaping thanked me big time.  Now we're happy to look at our little bungalow and see a similar view as the after pics above.