Moving forward...

The view from the front porch and from the road has changed as well.  In order to put in the new driveway and gate, we needed to move what we thought were six ancient azaleas that somehow managed to survive the storm.  When we got down to the business of moving them, we found that instead of f six azaleas there were actually eleven of them.  

In this photo from a few years ago, you can see the old azaleas forming a corner of our yard with our fencing running inside the boundary lines about five feet along the front and along the side. To accommodate the driveway, we moved the fence along the north side of the property out to the boundary line and moved all but two of those azaleas along the front.  Here's another view of the bushes in bloom….from the road looking in. The pink one began the formation of the corner you see in the first photo.

And here is the new view; they are just now losing their bloom for this year; we didn't think they would bloom after just being transplanted but bloom they did.  

And a slightly different angle….

The rock runs right up along where the old fence ran; the rock is from the 20 foot slab that was destroyed in the tornado.  We are still breaking that old thing up and using the rock to secure both the new culvert and an old one along the front that diverts water during tropical storms.  

Today Hunter and I have been planting more jasmine in front of each fence post and transplanting fern to run in between each post.

Eventually, that fence line will look like this one on the other side of the property…

Another view of the new driveway and the stone that lines the first part of the entrance.  We cut away a few feet of the extra large drain field and David will start building a bulk head there this week.  The wood will be painted white to match the stone and the fence posts….  The two small trees you can just barely see the other side of the pecan are the Lemon and Cumquat trees that used to be in front of our back fence hiding the old parking area.  We are hoping they survive the transplant because they both took a real beating in the tornado when the ancient pecan fell right on top of them.  The lemon tree was accidentally cut down almost to the ground while we chainsawed our way out of the yard.  It has a lot of new growth on it so we have our fingers crossed.

Although Friday night was bit depressing sitting on the back patio looking at a sea of various shades of brown; taking the time today to look at each section of what we have so far accomplished and focusing on moving forward, I find I can visualize the day when once again, our place is an oasis for our spirits.