A happier place...

Living in a rental has its set of drawbacks. We have come to accept our place as "tenants" of a property where we do not get the last say. We also have accepted our place as the eyesore yard of the neighborhood. Apparently it is a well known fact among the neighbors that we live in "the rental". It has also become apparent to us, through talking to neighbors that the house was previously occupied by four bachelors in the Navy who loved to play with their air soft pellet guns both inside and outside the house (I am still sucking up a good number of little BBs every time I vacuum a month later...and you can see nicks made by those BBs in the siding of the house outside...right next to where Abby thought it would be fun to write her name in crayon...not to be confused with where she wrote her name in chalk in huge letters across the wall in the garage...or her name in slightly smaller letters in colored pencil on the window sill in her room...where is she getting all of these writing utensils?! Apparently she hasn't learned yet that writing your own name amid the graffiti is a dead giveaway to who did it.)
That being said, Clark and I submitted a plan to the owners a few weeks ago of some small changes that we would like to make in order to make the house a little happier looking...like some landscaping...any landscaping. This is a before picture...very dreary indeed.
I drew up a sketch and priced everything out (they foot the bill, we get to be happier when we pull in the driveway.) This was my submitted "sketch". OK, so I lack basic Auto CAD skills...but it got the point across.

And here is our finished product.
Now if we could just do something about the yard/grass...more affectionately referred to as "the prairie" because of its lack of actual blades of grass. It takes almost two hours to mow with a push mower and leaves you sore for days. Not to mention its a very unsatisfying job to mow a scant scatter of weeds and dandelion shutes. But at least we have picked out the majority of cigarette butts. And I'm holding out for the awesome black rocking chairs from Lowe's.
Clark even re-did the front step which was previously made up of six cinder blocks stacked on one another.

before after