CURB APPEAL: POST TWO

A few days ago I blogged about curb appeal.  We have a cute little house but we're not a stand out in the curb appeal department.  I showed you how hubby had been scraping our concrete steps.  Yesterday after my exam I painted them and I can't stop staring at them.  It looks so much nicer!  If we ever build a house, concrete steps won't be on our list of "must haves".  They don't seem to last that well (ours are very chipped), and I honestly don't think they're very attractive.  Now that ours are painted, though, they seem less obnoxious - atrocious - something.

Today when I went out to examine my handy-work I decided to prune the bushes in front of the house.  I don't even know what they're called (no green thumb over here).  Anyway, they also look much better now that they're trimmed up a little.  The one on the right is a cuter shape than the one on the left which is kind of irritating for the perfectionist is some of us, but not all things in life can be symmetrical I guess.

I also thought I'd share a photo of our rhododendron compared to our neighbour's.  It's quite hilarious, really.  Ours was in pretty rough shape when we moved in and it's covered in lichen.  I tried to trim it last summer as per my mother in law's advice (she has the green thumb in the family).  It hasn't really perked up much, though.  These days Leroy bites branches off of it because they're his favourite sticks.  I don't really mind, honestly, because the rhododendron looks pitiful anyway, chewed or not.

I know what you're thinking.  That's a beautiful plant!  That doesn't look chewed at all!  Lichen is nowhere to be seen!  Right.  It's the neighbour's.  And yes, it is beautiful.  I feel lucky it's next door and I can look at it whenever I want.

This is ours.  Laughable, isn't it?  It wouldn't seem so bad if you didn't have the one next door to compare it to.  It almost makes me laugh when I look at it.  It looks like it's trying so hard to grow beautiful flowers, and the ones that bloom really are gorgeous.  They are just sparse, shall we say? :)