Removing the Shrub Look

These first two pictures were taken two years ago, our first spring in this house. Don't you just love the big huge shrubs covering half of the front window? We sure did :)

This pictures is actually taken after some improvement had been made because there use to be a huge "tree" (like a "Christmas" tree, but I think it was just a tall overgrown shrub) growing on the other side as well .... covering the whole front porch and reaching up to the porch roof. So if you sat on the front porch you got a lovely view of ... yes, you guessed it ... a shrub!!

Being a rental home and not wanting to sink our own money into it, we were somewhat limited on how to change the "shrub" look. Last spring we ripped out the overgrown shrubs that covered half our living room window and transplanted some smaller shrubs from the back yard. Already a great improvement ... especially for little James who suddenly had a wide open view to the world outside.

We were still left with an oversized box that I really didn't like, and not being home much last summer it quickly became an oversized box of weeds. A look at the front of the porch told us we had to keep something in front of it, so this year Rob ripped apart the box and made it flower box size. This also required us to move the stairs as they no longer had a box to go beside.

Here is the mostly finished results. A fresh coat of paint on the box, some flowers in the box, and grass growing on the hill and it will be done. We would have loved to get rid of the hill all together (on both sides) but ... ya ... now that's a project we'll leave to the dear owner to tackle some day, for now this will have to do. And the bright side is that the kids will still have their little hill to tobaggon on ... they spent a lot of time on there this past winter so I guess it's worth having.