One year ago this month, we became homeowners. This time last year, I was frantically painting the fireplace (lots of terrible, grainy photos here).

I’ve had requests to post more about the great outdoors around the house. It’s hard to overstate how much it’s changed in one year. Last July, the bulk of the yard was thick with 8-10 foot tall grasses and weeds. A year later, it really looks like a lawn. This spring, the lawnmower we bought off Craigslist last year broke. Then we found a restored John Deere riding mower on Craigslist (hurray for Craigslist!) at a really great price, so we jumped on it:

Here’s Ben having fun with our new toy in an area of our yard that was completely inaccessible just a year ago.

We’ve cut so much brush that, until recently, there were five or six giant (I’m talking 6-ft. tall, 10 ft. wide) piles of brush in the yard, which has meant some great bonfires.

But you can’t always burn brush (due to county-wide burn bans to prevent wildfires, etc.), and even a big fire takes all day to get through a pile of brush. A month or so later, Ben also found a wood-chipper on Craigslist (Craigslist has been seriously good to us):

Revolutionary.

We’ve been trying to really enjoy the expanded yard: lawn games, hammocks, even fireworks on the Fourth of July–

It’s been an incredible first year of home-ownership. And it’s been a delightful summer so far. And what’s more, it’s likely to get even better–as we’re getting married (here! on our own land!) in, oh, five or six weeks (!!).