Wishful Photoshopping

 

 Ta-Da! Look, it's beautiful end-of-May-type weather and Mikey and I are headed out to the backyard to play... and the backyard looks so beautiful that I can't help but take this photo.... (click to enlarge)

That's the reality I wish I was living in right now.

This is an extremely photoshopped landscape portrait of the backyard - which I created by merging two skuzzy pictures from Spring, 2010.

Look, the garage addition hasn't even been built yet in this pic. Amazing! (Hard to believe it was just last year? I had to think about it... was it 2009? No - I looked it up on the blog. We began garage addition construction in April of 2010.)

So obviously I added in the addition - with an addition of an addition door. I extended our side-gravel driveway up to that door and added the most perfect grass you've ever seen. The green in the background I actually stole from a much earlier summertime backyard photo - so that is actually what it will look like in back.

Then, since we have a lovely drop-off style cliff just on the horizon of the backyard, I decided to add a Mikey fence. Behind which, we'd store the skid steere and the trailer. (Actual skid steere and trailer may vary. Images for illustrative purposes only.)

Then some hydrangeas on the base of the hill to the left... some azaleas on the base of the hill to the right.... a coat of black paint for our Trogdor burninator apparatus (plus some gravel underneath for safety)... and two of my favorite trees in the known universe.

Looks oh so simple, right? (I tell myself while at the same time reminding myself that We-Can't-Start-Any-New-Projects.) I wish I could just handoff the pic to some landscape dude and say, "Make it so #1."

Unfortunately that's not all. The first pic came out so awesome that I just couldn't help but do another angle.

I took the liberty of adding a bucket of Coronas to this pic... add me sitting in one of those chairs and Mikey going down the little slide... Oh yeah. That would be a dream come true.

Hey! There's a quarter in the gravel! I guess I forgot to take one out. Oh well.

Believe it or not, I went through several incarnations of this angle to really get something sweet. I tried everything on that back garage wall. A couple wall mounted trellises.... a cabana thing... a different patio set... but I really just like this simple awning with the two chairs, a burning bush, and a small decorative trellis. I don't have THAT much room back there, after all.

Here's the pic I started with this time. Note I kinda moved the scene to the left... couldn't help but to do it. I don't have any pics facing the right direction.

Ok landscapers. I'll pay you like $100 and you make my yard look like this. Deal? Deal.