Yard Makeover

We've been busy this summer working on our front and back yards. I wish I had taken "before" pictures to truly do our work justice, but I didn't. I'll try to describe what it looked like before.

Here's the front steps. We added some plant boxes and transplanted some Tiger Lilies and Gladiolas from the backyard. They were happy for the sun in the front and bloomed beautifully earlier this summer.

Our biggest project. Gus ripped out our old cement walkway which was very cracked and infested with weeds and we laid a brand new walkway with pavers. The most exciting part was probably loading and unloading the compacter from our van. It took a little creativity to accomplish, but Gus is known for creativity. There was a small overgrown flower bed on one side of the pathway, so we weeded that out and took out the grass on the other side. We put down weed barrier and mulch and planted some Hostas that my sister in-law gave us. We left a little space for them to spread and we'll probably plant in around them next year.

We weeded out the flower bed around this tree and put down weed barrier and mulch. We used the cement pieces from our walkway to outline it. Tulips and daffodils bloom here in the spring.

Here's the backyard. Lots of change here! It was pretty much just overgrown everywhere before. In this area we laid down weed barrier and gravel near the chimney and have somewhat trained Bailey to "do her business" in that area to avoid her killing the sod. We also moved some rocks from the side of the house to create the little pathway. We laid down sod as there was little to no grass there. We used cement from the front walkway to build a retaining wall around our massive tree, planted a few ferns and tried to revive a Hydrangea. Hopefully it will bloom next summer!

We planted some Azalea bushes near the fence, put down weed barrier and mulch.

We made a little play area for the kids. This was a vegetable garden, but our backyard gets very little sun (due to the above mentioned massive tree!). We cleared that out, put down weed barrier and play mulch. Gus' patient gave us the sandbox and we found the slide on the side of the road.

We trimmed this tree and transplanted some Hostas around it. The random brown pole in the middle used to be a random white PVC pipe in the middle. We didn't know if it served some sort of strange purpose, so we decided to spray paint it brown and use it for a hanging plant or two and wind chimes. Since then, we figured out it was there to serve as a pole for a clothes line. So we can remove it if we want to, but it is planted pretty deep, so we'll put that off for a little while.



Well, that's it! The goal this year was just really to clean everything out and make the yard a place that the kids and their friends can play. We hope to plant some more perennials next year to add some color. But for now, we'll just enjoy a few more weeks (hopefully months!) of outdoor dinners and afternoon play time.