Claudia, Congrats with your new home! Glad to see you posting again. What do you mean by wet clay? Is the ground actually wet? if the soil is wet, you could plant bog plants and plants that love water and they will do fine. Just mix in a generous amount of cow compost in the clay and mulch, you should be able to plant any part sun bush or perennial plant. Just a thought, I jsut bought Liatris at HD on Saturday. I got 60 little bulbs for 14.99. They are perennial, they spread and are beautiful! Look up Liatris online and see if you like the look. Anyway, for part sun climbing hydrangea would love your yard, and it loves to climb on wood without damaging it. Cannas LOVE wet or moist soil, Bananas Love moist soils, you will have to mound it up when you plant it for drainage, but they are beautiful. Ajunga likes moist soil, any kind. Butterfly bush would do fine with manure, they can be planted in part sun, I would plant in sunnies spot tho. Iris would love your yard, if it gets at least 6 hours of sun. Well, that's all I can think of for now, I hope you have fun planning out your new yard. Congrats again,

Seems like all of you agree with me that it could be a lot better. I had thought it should be wider if not all the way across. Les, I'd never thought of iron corbels, kinda interesting and unique for sure. I just know when I saw the timber ones at the home show I loved them. But I was wondering too if they were TOO rustic. Caroleoh, I know what you're saying about my trim and cabinets. The cabinets are distressed but not heavily. My heart says rustic but I've decorated more traditional with some antiques and distressed pieces mixed in. kswl, I purposely told the builder I didn't want my mantel painted because I thought the wood look would be a little more rustic and in keeping with the bricks. It just didn't turn out like I pictured in my mind and I can't say exactly why, so frustrating! gray, I do live in TN but I'm over 400 mi from Dollywood so I can't make a day trip to check them out. Sounds kinda wild, I've never seen a mantel carved with 3D animals. Maybe they have a website. Thanks for the input. Would love to hear from others too about their thoughts on the timber mantel or other suggestions. Thanks!

beckysharp Reinstate SW Unconditionally, When you recommended I look up "passive solar," I began digging into the topic, and then from there I looked into passive cooling. Wow! Thanks for that--I've learned a lot but still have tons more questions. tangerinedoor, I have not yet seen any examples of netZero homes in Alabama, but would love to look into that. Very interesting. But probably a lot harder to do in Alabama compared to Vermont. The problem with thermal mass in the south is--you gotta keep it out of the sun or it'll make the house too hot all the time. And even if you keep the most sun-exposed parts of the home out of the sun via huge trees, reflective coatings, roof overhangs, etc, I believe you'd still need air conditioning. Here's an example of a netZero home in Alabama I would not be interested in: uses a lot of energy keeping cool, thus has $50,000 of solar panels on roof to produce all energy needed.

I would not spend one cent on putting in grass or an irrigation system or any live landscaping whatsoever. It makes no sense whatsoever for you to spend your hard-earned money making improvements to a property that you do not own, and the money you spend can never be deducted from your taxes or re-couped in any way. Furthermore, the cost of water is prohibitive where you live, and watering a yard costs a lot of money. Once you put in a yard, you will have to maintain it, or it will look even worse. In the summer in southern California many places prohibit the watering of lawns for weeks on end because of water shortages and what you put in now will die. Right now, you were given a wasteland. That's what you need to give it back to the landlord as, unless your lease says otherwise. Please carefully read your lease and make sure he didn't slip something in about your putting in grass. If not, take multiple photos of the front and back and side yards that have the date on them, and and have the landlord sign them on the back, and you sign them too, and you keep a couple of copies and give a set to the landlord. I would add a codicil to the lease that both of you sign saying something like photographs are given to the landlord showing the current condition of the front, back and side yards with no living vegetation whatsoever and piles of dead vegetation. The lessee (that is you) bears no responsibility for planting these areas. As the dead vegetation is present at move-in of the lessee deemed a fire hazard it is the responsibility of the lessor (that is the landlord) to mitigate the hazard as soon as possible but in any event no later than 10 working days of notification of such hazard if it exists. And then you should contact the local fire house and have someone come out and see if the conditions constitute a fire hazard. If they do consider it a fire hazard, get it in writing on official fire department letterhead. Because if they do consider it a fire hazard, your renters insurance (do you have that by the way?) may not even cover your damages because they may consider it negligence. And do you really want to try to sue your landlord for the value of your posessions? And why should you have to pay someone to clean up the mess that previous tenants made? Did you clean up their dirty kitchen? NO So don't clean up their dirty and unsafe yard. For the Houzzers that are unaware, California is a tinderbox.