Spiffin Up

I'd noticed that our mailbox was looking pretty fugly lately.  It had to be at least 7 or 8 yrs old.  I mentioned to SM that, along with spreading some new mulch to the landscaped beds, I wanted to spiff up the mailbox area of our yard.

"Why?  All you ever get is bills in the mail.  That's nothing to celebrate."  SM points out.

"All the same, it is a reflection of the home don't ya think?"  I ask.

In our HOA free neighborhood mailboxes come in a shapes, sizes and price points.  From those boxy green plastic things to the fancy wrought iron posts and boxes, you can find it all in this neighborhood.  I didn't want to spend a lot and when SM priced mailboxes anywhere from $10 to several hundred dollars, I knew that I'd be re-purposing some things. 

We went to Walmart and bought a $10 grey metal "rural" (? what makes it rural?) mailbox.  I got out some of our beige house paint and slapped that on.  It looked better already.  What about the house numbers?  I looked up and down the street.  Some had the reflective stick on type, some had the nail into the post type.  All were hard to see.  So I decided to go big.  I took some of our house numbers as a template and used a magic marker to outline them and then painted them a deep green to stand out against the beige box. 

Meanwhile, SM pulled up the post and discovered that the bottom was rotting out so off he went to the big box store and paid $6 for a new pressure treated post.  He then salvaged some of the old cedar post to create a mount.  I painted the post the same color as our shutters.

I went out and trimmed back the Knockout Roses that were insanely out of control.  Keeping in mind that I'd like to be able to manage all this, I dug out one of the roses and all of the zebra grass. 

I had asked SM to dig out an evergreen bush in the backyard that needed to be moved in order to make way for the strawberry bed that we hope to put in soon.   I figured we'd try to salvage that bush and use it in the front yard instead.

Because the ground was heavy with wet clay, SM tackled this over 2 weekends.  He went out again yesterday and I saw him digging and straining.  "Why don't you just bring the truck back here, tie it up and yank it out."  I asked.

"I could strip it and kill it."  SM said.

"It's got to go one way or the other and you'll never be able to dig that entire root ball out and drag it around yourself.  Lets get the truck to do the heavy lifting.

Mission accomplished.  Was that ever easy!  SM then muscled the bush into the new hole he'd dug.  I gave it a good soaking and a haircut.  (We'll see what happens.)  Toss on some fresh mulch and it looks much better already.

Even KiKi seems to like it.

So while it may not be the fanciest mailbox on the planet I do think it spiff's up the front a bit.  Now if only we didn't have all those weeds in the yard.  (Although the dandelions do add a nice touch of color.)