what a nightmare!!

the people who occupied this house before us decided that it would be awesome if last fall they raked all the leaves into piles and then...left them. thank you, you are jerks.

me and matt worked for hours yesterday and I worked for quite a few this morning all ready and it still looks terrible. I love yard work, but this is ridiculous. I can't wait until it's all pretty again. it's my mission of the summer for sure. To make matters worse, we have a double corner lot, which will be amazing once it is inhabitable, but it is massive to clean. I went up the block yesterday and we are THE WORST house on the block. In fact, all the other yards look great. The next worse to ours is our neighbors and it appears that it might just be leaves and mess from our yard blown over on to their yard from the wind. how embarrassing. So far, 30 GIANT garbage bags of leaves. yikes.

here are a few 'before' pictures. and these aren't even the real 'before' before pictures. these are the pictures I took this morning after me and matt put in so much work yesterday. I wanted to post them so that when I post pictures in a month or so, you can be astounded at the difference. We moved into this house so that Madeleine could have a yard to play in and I am determined to make this mess playable. My dreams of having a garden in the back might have to wait until next summer by the looks of it, but I am going to try.