No Curb Appeal

The exterior of the farmhouse still looks pretty bad. Stacks of trash are gone but the stucco and trim is worn and battered by the brutal sun and wind. We're patching holes and cleaning out planters. Eventually we'll need to change out the windows for double paned ones, so must wait on replacing trim. 
And... we have a new (used) swamp cooler that works! Because of the strange layout of the house we couldn't figure a better place to install it, such as the roof. Function has to trump looks in this case.
At first I didn't understand why so many desert property owners obsessively scrape the ground around their houses, getting rid of anything that grows. Now I do: fire and critters. We still haven't seen a snake, but if you pick up wood, carpet, or trash that's been on the ground a while, there's likely a scorpion underneath. Black widows love nooks and crannies. So we are now appreciators of the clean earth aesthetic.
​Some color ideas...

Several weeks later, shot on a monsoon afternoon: