This week, the folks at Cyberhomes will share our New Year's resolutions for 2009. Look for our home and real-estate goals for the upcoming year.
Kris Goodfellow, Cyberhomes Vice President & Product Manager
My resolution: To halt the horror of my backyard. Seven years ago I left New York City and moved into my suburban Southern California house with its big backyard. I had visions of a luscious garden and mountains of cut flowers on my dining room table. Since then, I have nicknamed my yard the killing fields, the plants my unwitting victims. The horrors I have inflicted on those poor souls! I am a despot of my garden, never speaking to it with love, and perhaps that is my problem. Why can't you grow there, little pansy? What’s wrong with you, jasmine? Lavender, you're supposed to be heat resistant! Cute little pansies come in by the flat and go out as dust. Gardenias die off by the gallon. My investment in the local Home Depot garden center has yielded so little and cost so much. I must be stopped!
Cost: My major expense will be my own time, because this year I will learn before I buy. I will make sketches of beds, complete with measurements and observations of soil and light. I will protect my drip systems from my own little Marley. I will make my own compost heap and use it to grow tomatoes and squash. I will fertilize my roses and deadhead my flowers. And I will plant what I buy immediately instead of letting flowers die in their sad little containers because I took on too much that particular weekend. In short, I will be a benevolent gardener — fair and loving to all who enter my Eden.
Last year's resolution: To replace the termite-ridden railing on my back patio and create a space for my trash cans to live under that patio. The years of begging the termites to move along to moister climates had not convinced them to leave, and the termite toxins arrived too late to help. It was a homeowner's liability claim waiting to happen.
The outcome: I hired a contractor to rip out the railing and rebuild it. What should have taken a few days took months and cost $940, but now is a fabulous hideaway for the trash cans and bridge to the backyard from the back door. The termites have no doubt relocated to the beach and not the beams of my house. Right?
Click here to read the previous New Year's resolution.
Click here to read the next New Year's resolution.—Kris Goodfellow