I was silently annoyed with my husband. Well, sometimes not so silently. Immediately after moving in to our house, he began to map out his plans for the outside! Read all about our renovation story here, then you will understand my confusion!!! When did we decide to spend a boatload of money on the outside when the inside was in dire need of some major TLC. I get it, having that many pine trees was not good for the roof and it looked really, really bad out there. At one point in time I think the yard probably looked nice. But after years of neglect, it showed! Everything was overgrown. There were even snakes! We had people tell us later that they never even knew a house was here!

The Outside When We Moved In (just a glimpse)
My husband worked tirelessly. We had over 200 large pine trees taken down. Stumps were ground, he raked and burned, weekend after weekend. What a huge job. Ultimately the goal was to have a nice level manicured lawn. I wanted palm trees somewhere. Around here the live oak trees are a local treasure. They are ancient and sprawling, covered in Spanish moss. Well, go figure! We only have couple small ones. No doubt that they will be spectacular in about 100 more years, they have already begun to flourish since removing all the (did I mention 200) pines….