Before pictures of our front yard
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Here is the first view we had of the house, I took this photo as I drove up the first time after seeing the listing on MLS. The people who previously owned the house were laywers and could easily affort to run their sprinkler every day plus have landscapers come over and manicure every week.

I hate pine trees, they drop tons of needles making a mess everywhere, plus my older daughter is allergic to them. So top of the list was to get rid of the pine trees -- plus we discovered that the big one on the left was starting to dig under the house, and we were afraid if left any longer, it might lift and crack the foundation. My wife and both my daughters are allergic to the olive trees to the right, which are next to the driveway, plus the trees kept scratching the cars as we drove in and out, and dropping olives every day -- what a huge mess as all the neighborhood kids would stomp on them. So they were marked to go also.



I was able to find this aerial photo on the county website, so with a little photoshop we played with a bunch of different scenarios.

We wanted to convert the yard to a rock landscape so we didn't have to water the front, which saves a bunch of bucks plus cuts down on the maintenance needed. A lot of people have courtyard walls which are very attractive, and since our house is set so back on our lot, we had room to add one. It adds more private space to the property, and also blocks the view from the street into our windows. So now I can walk around the house in the buff. :)

We decided to go with river rock, which since it is grey, I figured it would look like the moon. Why not add in a lunar lander, with the earth rising mural painted on the wall? Surely the city would consider it art ?


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