Fall gardens don’t have to be dreary and bland. Even though you will have lots of work to do preparing the soil and plants for the upcoming cold season, you can still enjoy the color explosion given by the very best flowers that bloom in autumn.
Chrysanthemums are the most commonly seen fall flowers. They come in a wide variety of shapes and colors, and they are highly resistant to the cool weather that comes with the fall. Normally, you would plant them in spring, but they will also work if need to plant them in the fall. Just buy potted chrysanthemums and replant them. You can even keep them in their pots, if you intend to use them as a temporary solution for one season only.
Lilies make a spectacular addition to the landscape, and the toad lily, with its dramatic orchid-like shape, blooms in late summer and mid-autumn. It can be planted in shaded areas, and requires generous amounts of water at least twice a week. You can compliment the toad lily with a patch of its crazier cousin, the red spider lily, for one of the most original and decorative combinations. Once the temperatures get lower, you need to cover the lilies with fresh mulch to protect them.
Shrubs and sub-shrubs are among the best plants to use in a fall garden. The blue mist shrub will bloom in late-August, proudly displaying its flowers. As an added bonus, its silver-green foliage remains attractive all-year round. You can compliment it with golden witch hazel or pink sedum (which, by the way, is also known as “autumn joy”).
So, now that your garden has flowers and shrubs, it only needs something to cover the ground. You can go with the Michaelmas daisy, which comes in wide varieties, and will continue to bloom until snow covers it. Be careful, though, because it tends to grow everywhere, and it will cover every patch of soil left unused. You can also go with leadplant, another very resistant ground cover, that blooms charming little blue flowers.
Whatever you choose, go ahead and start your fall garden. It’s not too late!
The moment you decide to sell your home, there will be a number of decisions you will need to make. Who is going to be your realtor? What repairs need to be made to your home? Do you need to hire an interior designer to help your home look its best? How you answer these questions will determine how quickly you are able to sell your home.
I highly recommend hiring an interior designer, because giving your home a fresh look can be the difference between selling your home at the price you want or having to accept less. However, you don’t want to wait until the house as been put on the market to call the designer. You want to call them immediately, and make sure you take their advice in stride. When you have lived in a home for so long, it can be difficult to hear improvement suggestions. Despite that, remember this: the moment you decided to sell your home, it went from being personal to being about the business of selling your home.
When it comes to the individual rooms in your home, the designer is going to suggest things like moving pieces of furniture, rearranging bookcases and various other tweaks. They are also going to focus quite a bit of their attention on de-cluttering. All of us, myself included, collect a lot of “stuff” over the years, and you don’t want your clutter to be front and center when potential buyers are coming over.
Finally, an interior designer can help you update the look of your home. It can be difficult to stay up with the latest trends and fashions, but that is the job of a designer. This keeps you from having to worry about being on the absolute cutting edge.
When selling your home, it is important to remember that you don’t have to do everything yourself. In fact, I would recommend that you don’t. All of us have our own individual talents, and it is a good idea to leverage each others talents to the mutual benefit of everyone.
I have built my reputation on the quality of the service I provide my clients. It is really easy to tout the number of sales when you are advertising to prospective clients. However, I really came into this with a different mindset. I know how much service is important to me. After all, I will go out of my way when I search for clothing, food or just about anything else if I know I am going to get good service.
As many of you know, I live in Hendersonville, so much of my time is spent commuting to my clients homes and places of business. With the Middle Tennessee area as spread out as it is, it involves a lot of travel time. In all honesty, it really doesn’t bother me because I like to put myself in my client’s shoes. I want them to feel at ease. When my daughter was selling a condo a few years ago, I was very impressed with how the real estate agent really took her time to explain the process to my daughter. The agent took care to make her comfortable, and that really resonated with me.
So, when I decided to start working as a real estate agent, I wanted to bring those exact qualities to the job. I know that going through the process of buying or selling a home can be daunting, even for folks that have done it before. Some people have lived in their homes for many years, and have a strong emotional attachment to their home. Since the dollar value of a home rarely equals the emotional value a homeowner places in their home, it is very important that a real estate agent be sensitive to those feelings.
I don’t always have the chance to talk about my philosophy on real estate, so I wanted to give people a chance to read what I think it is all about. At least, this is what I think real estate should be about. It’s about the quality of service, not the quantity of sales.
Traveling different places during holidays is a fun activity for all. A family excursion provides an important break for all the members of a busy family unit. The only piece that is missing is the peace of mind that leaving a home safe and protected can bring.
To be fearful of someone breaking into your home while you are away can easily ruin a much needed and deserved vacation. In order to make the most of your travels it’s important to make sure your home is secured before you leave.
Of course the easiest thing to do is to invest in a security alarm system that has 24hr monitoring to fire and police. Another great solution is to hire a house sitter to stay at your home when you are away. Many of these sitters will also take care of your pets and plants as well so this could be a great alternative for some situations.
Whatever you do, make sure you don’t leave the house looking like it is “empty”. Leaving this impression could invite intruders into your home as an “easy” target. Make sure the newspaper, postal service and any other specialty services are canceled or put on hold while you are away. If needed, hire a kid from your neighborhood to help keep your yard intact and keep papers from gathering up in your yard or on your porch.
You should never keep valuables such as jewels, bonds, share documents, bank details or cash in the house, but if you do, this is a great time to get them transferred to bank locker before your travel starts. Informing the neighbors is an inevitable task of traveling and most will watch out for your property because they would like you to do the same for them. They should be informed of traveling details along with a contact in case of emergency. The last thing is to inform the cops in the residing area about the vacation details so that they would watch over the house as well.
Doing everything described above will give you the peace of mind you deserve when you are away. Have a great trip!
