April 2009 – with small dog and new color (which highlights the weird lack-of-trim around the kitchen windows – gotta get on that)

Mid-June 2008 – with mown grass, pre-painting (way too many power and cable lines coming to the house – we got rid of 2 of them and we’ve also since cut down the gigantic arborvitae to the right of the house and two large ash trees to the left of the house (sob! except that they could have fallen on the house or a neighbor’s house in a heavy storm so it’s safer we cut them down now.))

May 2008 – with flowering quince and tulips

May 2007 – with tulips

June 2006 – with wheelbarrow

March 2006 – with open cellar door

After several weeks of me pissing and moaning about this, Amy finally threw up her hands and said, “Fine! Let’s go get a tree!” We talked a bit and decided on either a red or sugar maple. So last Sunday, we headed out to one of the big local nurseries. Alas, they didn’t have any trees onsite. We headed down to the local nursery that’s a lot closer to us (but doesn’t have the same widespread reputation) and hit paydirt (literally – everything was 25% off, so we got to buy a more mature/expensive tree!) They had several types of both red and sugar maples on-site. After an hour of thinking and debating, we decided on a lovely little Green Mountain Sugar Maple. It won’t get as big as either of the ash trees, but I think it’s going to be simply beautiful. Here it is being delivered and planted.

And here it is, looking towards the back of the yard and then towards our house.

Why yes, I do love it! It’s going to take many years to get a lot bigger, and I can’t wait to see it grow.

Either we are too particular or this is a lot harder work than we anticipated. I’m going to go with a healthy dose of both those things.

Remind me again why we decided to paint the outside of our house. It’s a time vortex.