An Embarrassment of a Yard

Chad and I were so excited when we bought our house to make the yard beautiful! 2 years later, our yard looks worse than when we bought it. The first year we were spending so much time and money on the inside of the house, that the outside got somewhat neglected. The next spring I was pregnant and as I got bigger and it got hotter, the weeds started to be neglected again! After Brianna was born I had promised to work on it... but then she had colic, never slept and screamed all the time. So, once again another excuse to neglect the yard. In the last month I have had 3 different people knock on my door to see if they can do our yard work! Of course it would cost several hundred dollars for them to do it (I'm thinking in my mind that it's worth it, but unfortunately we're not made of money!). I had seen this last guy driving slowly in his truck down the street...and the only house they stopped at was mine!!! How embarrassing! Our yard sticks out, and not in a good way. Our lawn has almost completely died and the weeds were scary! (I have been secretly wishing one of my neighbors would call the Garden Police show. If you haven't seen it, they come to homes with ugly yards once neighbors call in. They "cite" you for having a bad yard, and after putting up crime scene tape they help you make your yard beautiful at their expense! Not bad if you're already embarrassed!) So, after the last visit with people at my door about how ugly my yard was I put Brianna down for a nap and weeded for a few hours. I did the same thing for a few days and it looked a little better. Chad got a load of mulch yesterday and I spent the day laying it all down! It looks so much better. We just need some new plants and flowers which we hope to plant on Memorial Day. (And grass, but we'll just have to plant seed!)
So, the only thing that looks good in my yard are these flowers! Well, only up close! The stems look like a weed and for some reason they grew to 4 feet this year. They finally just bloomed...but it looks silly having flowers sticking out of a 4 foot tall "weed." I'm about to either transplant them or cut them down. We'll see!