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The front of the house was a mixture of dead stuff in the yard itself, which was a wasteland of seasonal weeds and bermuda grass, and uncontrolled growth next to the house. Bermuda grass is mostly brown, except in the winter, if the winter actually has a lot of rain, which we haven't had for some time, and spreads everywhere by both seeds and underground roots. It is nearly ineradicable. To balance the desert there were wildly over-grown things in the planter next to the house, including several volunteer trees and a creeping blight of bamboo. Something Had To Be Done, and it had to be done in a way that was fun. So I decided to apply my home renovation philosophy to landscaping.
Wherein I begin landscaping the front yard. I had already removed an extraneous tree plus an invasion of bamboo from the west end of the house, now I needed to do the same for the east end, and begin replanting and redesigning the landscape for the body of the yard. By the Fall of 2006 I had made an impressive amount of progress, and by December was quite pleased with how things were going, having completed the first of my planned three tiers.
The year began rather inauspiciously, with a Terrible Frost on 14 January, which caused plants to die and me to get side-tracked, although I had at least gotten started on the revised walkway. A bit discouraged, I went back to work inside the house. However after a month or two a nice recovery had occurred, followed by the flowery glory of Spring. By Mid-April I was reasonably pleased with the way things were going, and making plans for the future.
Combining the topicality of boomers and their "60 is the New 50" with global warming, I took some spring-like photos at the end of February 2008, on the theory that February is the new March. The theory sort of works for both the back and front yards, not to mention other people's yards as well, admired on a Leap Day Walk. Aside from taking more flower pix when Spring actually arrived, there was no further progress on the landscaping.
I began the year with high hopes that I would accomplish more than I had the previous year, and did get my tomaoes started in a timely manner. I also planned to get the second tier of landscaping done in the front, which didn't actually happen, but I did get to start harvesting my own lemons. I wasn't doing much, but the plants were certainly growing well. By that Fall I had accomplished a little bit, both in front and in back.
So then it was 2010, and the front yard still wasn't finished! But my plants were producing lots of things to eat, and by Fall I was trying to find more recipes for tomatoes and lemons. Indeed, by November the plants were so carried away with vegetative exuberance one would have thought it was Spring.
By February 2011 the plants were already blooming, producing edible things, and I was back at work. And then the itinerant tree trimmer made a discovery about the over-grown shrub next to the driveway: it was infested with termites. Removing it, and the shrub next to it that was also afflicted, led to a cascade of home improvement events, which derailed my landscaping in front, but improved the house's appearance. Spring ended with the exterior of the house (although not the garage) completely repainted.