I Love Spring!!!!

I love, love, love spring. I wish it would last longer than it does-fall and winter are so hard to me when it gets dark so early. I love the cool, crispness in the morning, low humidity, and long sunny days. Today was perfect outside. I love the bright, blue skies with white, puffy clouds. I love hear birds chirping. I love seeing green grass, new growth on trees, and blooming flowers. I think my favorite part might be sunsets after 7 pm instead of 4 pm!!! It makes me want to be outside all day. We're really looking forward to this spring b/c of our finished fence! The majority of the time we are do-it-yourself people..actually I should say J and his family are DIY folks, and now that I'm part of the family I've turned into one (maybe it's more that I've been required to become one :)). We've lived in our house 4.5 years and I can only remember hiring someone to work on our house 2 times-to paint the exterior of the house and repair our air conditioner. This week we bit the bullet and had someone else complete the fence. We did the gate and one side of the fence and got as far as preparing the other sides. At that point J priced out what the rest of the fence would cost us to build and compared that to estimates. It ended up we would only save about $80-$100! The guys started yesterday and finished this afternoon. It was money well worth it. Who knows how long it would have taken us to finish it. Here are before and after pics. The first 2 photos are the closest I have to before. We didn't start taking pictures until we had already started the project. You can see all the overgrowth and one of the trees we took down (the tree behind our fence that the city said wasn't dead, even though it had no growth on it, and when it was down we realized it clearly had heart rot-glad we didn't listen to the city)
These pics are after we took down the tress/shrubs that lined the existing fence. The wood fence on the left side is what J and I (mostly J) did.
And, drum roll please, the finished fence today!!!!!!!!!!!

Next project?? Landscaping! Anyone want to help me since I'm not a very successful gardener? We have so much sunlight now after clearing it all out, I think plants might actually grow now. I can't wait to spend lots of time in the backyard. It feels like a completely different place now, come on over and enjoy it with us.