A Welcome Welcome Area

It's hard to enjoy coming home to your house when the front of your house is U-G-L-Y.  And has no alibi.  I'm completely aware I've made that joke before.  I can't help it.  It just come out of me.

Here's the front of our townhouse.  Old mulch, dying plants, really says "come on in!" right?

My sad little front yard

So, I went with my parents, who were out for the week, to THD (The Home Depot - we spend so much there, I'm allowed to give it a nickname).  Had to make a few trips because AFTER my dad put 6 bags of mulch on our cart, we realized we couldn't get 6 bags of mulch in a car with 3 people, 1 baby, and a stroller.  Lucky for us, we realized we couldn't do it before we bought the mulch.  We bought some...um....red pointy flowers.  And some....yellow flowers.  You see I'm great with flower names.  I'm what you call a pro.

Yellow marigolds and red...um..stickleface flowers.  That's what I'm calling them

Also picked up several bags of EarthGro Red mulch.  I had no idea there were so many colors of mulch!  I didn't know mulch existed until a few years ago.  I opted NOT to go with Sierra Red, which looked TOO red.  Can't piss off the Homeowner's Association (see below) and although I love love love color, it was a bit much.  The plain Red looked just bright enough to go with my red and yellow flowers.

First, mom and I laid out the flowers to get an idea of what they would look like and of our spacing.  Ok, truthfully, we were just getting them out of the trunk, but it was a way to start to see how it would all look.  There were four blooms in each pot, and Mom informed me we could actually pull them out of their pots and separated them.  No, Ali, they aren't connected.  Huh, go figure.  I just quadrupled my flowers!  We laid them out to see the picture even better.

This looks like some type of mass flower suicide.

Then came the digging!  I hurt my shoulder last week, so I was trying to dig with my nondominant hand while in an arm sling and Mom was plowing away with the trowel.  There were a TON of roots in the old mulch, so this was a much more annoying task than I had hoped.  But once we got all the flowers in, it was starting to look pretty darn fabulous.

See?  Getting pretty darn fabulous.

Then it was mulch time.  Three bags didn't get us the whole way, but man, did it make a difference!  It's like going from black and white to color.

What a difference some red makes!

Another trip to THD and another three bags of mulch later and we are looking niiiice.  I also trimmed back the bushes a bit so I could actually GET at my hose.  (There's a joke in there somewhere)

Much welcome-ier!

Now an interesting thing is that big ugly trash can.  We bought it and then, based on the advice of the neighbor to our RIGHT, bought a pretty white gate to put right in front of it so it can still sit in this very convenient location, but isn't visible from the front.  If we had a corner unit, we'd put it around the side of the house, but we do not.  So, we had a white gate (still wrapped in plastic) sitting out there just waiting to be installed when we heard a knock at the door.  Our very anal, lonely neighbor to our LEFT came to our door and the conversation went a-like this:

Guy: Hi there, I see you bought a gate.  I presume you mean to put it here? (indicates the front of our trash cans)

Me: Ummm...can I not?

Guy: Well, I don't know if Brian (owner of house we are renting) informed you, but there is a Housing Association and there are bylaws about installing gates.  Here is a copy of the bylaws (hands over giant stapled document).  I'm on the board (a little TOO proud of this fact) and if you want to install this, please submit us a letter telling us what you're installing and why.

Me: (has no words, but is thinking  "if I can't put my gate up, please enjoy the view of my trash can")

So I completely understand that you don't want someone putting up a gate or fence or sign that has a big marijuana plant on it, but this is a bit much.  I guess we'll be submitting that letter soon.

Anyway, left to do on the front: more mulching on some bushes along the side, taking off our house numbers and re-painting them, and filling in the empty spaces with some big pots with flowers or some hanging flowers on hooks or something.

What do you think?