Before and after (2013)

Our bed and breakfast was closed for maintenance this weekend, it was just me and the CFO.  On satruday morning, we decided to enjoy the unusually mild weather and went down to a botanical garden near Champaign, IL.  It eneded up being pretty small, so it didn’t take us too long to walk through it… We decided to eat lunch and then continue south to the outlet mall.  Surprise, surprise, a trip with the CFO ended up with shopping.

That night we went to see the movie, “The Heat” and got many laughs out of it.  It was funny to watch two talented female actresses do the good cop/bad cop thing.  As long as you don’t mind foul language, you should see it.  On Sunday, we went to church, out to lunch and then I spent the afternoon working in the yard.  After hosting guests for two weekends, I was a little behind on weeding my seeded areas. 

A good friend of mine suggested doing some before/after images of the yard.  Surprisingly, I don’t have a ton of before photos, but I was able to find some and then went out and shot some similar images.  Unfortuantely, the house is shading part of the yard so the photos aren't the greatest...  



 A view to our neighbor to the left:

 

 

Looking back towards the corner, including the utility boxes I've been working to hide:

 

From the back of the yard looking back towards the house:

 

A view along the creek looking towards our left neighbor:

 

 

 

It is by no means close to done, but I have made some good progress, while working on a shoe string budget.  I should try to total up what I've spent on plant material so far, but it hasn't been too much since almost everything was bought on clearance, as a small bareroot twig or grown from seed.