My Secret Shame - the Yard "Before" Pics

OK, people, my last post was abnormally chipper, to make up for this post, which is a skotche of a downer.  Well, not a downer so much as a as-much-as-I-try-hard-to-be-perky-on-the-interwebs-this-house-is-still-in-progress post.  Welcome to my secret shame (dun dun DUN.)  However, great "after" pictures are so much more satisfying with a good wow-that-is-terrible "before" session, don't you think?  So, this is the story of the yard "before".


One of the reasons I agreed to move into my husband's house was the enormous yard.  This house sits on a double lot which means by Seattle standards, we have a biiiig yard.  When I moved in, the yard was extremely overgrown due to a long summer of getting married shenanigans and being away.  Last October, we hired some guys to spend allll day hacking everything out of the yard and reclaiming the yard space.  It was a big job and they did great.  Unfortunately, if there's something that I am worse at than cooking, its gardening.  The beds are now bare, ready for something great.  Which...has yet to happen.  So, daffodils are blooming and spring is going crazy everywhere but here:

 

Aaaaand, here:

 

And here:

The other side of the yard is even more shameful, due to the large quantities of car parts, tar paper and other hillbilly-like accoutrements.  Beverly Hillbillies ain't got nothin' on this:

 

(Yes, that's a car dashboard on the left, and an old keg on the back porch.)  And then there's this:

 

I used to call this The Midden.  It's less overgrown with vines, but the car hood and the car door make a nice junkyard effect...

And then there's where the porch used to be.  <Sigh>  Now it looks like this:

 

A total junkheap.  Oy.  The yard looks like this from our bedroom:

Not very inviting, right?  But hey, nowhere to go but up from here, right??  Right?!?  Right!

We have made some small progress lately, mostly thanks to my new mother-in-law who bought plants, brought them over and popped them in the ground.  (I know, I'm spoiled!  In my defense, I tried to help plant them, but my only free day for planting was rained out.)  So now we have this, which is going to be a lilac:

 

(With my baby in the background, hi Beetle!)

And this, which is going to be a tea plant:

 

And this, which is going to be something totally lovely that I've forgotten.

 

The one thing I managed to do right was plop some peony tubers in the ground last fall.  So with a little luck, this ugly-duckling red sprout might turn into a gorgeous peony bush!  Fingers crossed for this little guy!

 

So that's the yard "before".  As I've invited a buncha people over for an Easter picnic, I have precisely two weeks to whip it into shape!  I'll keep you updated on my progress and let me know if there's anything you can think of that I could plant now that would be nice looking in time for Easter!