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The landscaper came out yesterday and removed all of the crap from our yard, dumped some dirt and leveled it out. Our lilac remained, a small blueberry bush that will need a better home, and some hosta and such. They left the lilac, the hosta was relocated near our old tree stump to build a small flower bed in the back corner. Lots of grass seed was put down. We had the (mostly dead) tree cut down earlier this year, but our huge tree that we hang the skychair on remains, still giving us a lot of shade. We need to get the tree guy out to grind out the stump if we want that done later, but we need to decide on that. It would cost the same amount as we paid for the trees to be cut down and for the other tree to be pruned. A lot of money, but if we leave that huge trunk we are going to have to keep cutting the babies/suckers that grew like nutso.
They left space for beds/planting around the perimeters and there is grass seed everywhere else. We have to water for 20 minutes 2x a day to get it to survive. They even ripped out the little messy patch of weeds in our driveway between our property and the neighbor and put grass seed there. We had to run to Home Depot last night to buy a selection of splitters/hoses/sprinklers and timers to reliably wet everything.
The landscaper suggested some kind of smallish tree for near the front of the yard to provide shade/privacy for us when we are sitting on our front porch. He suggested a dogwood or magnolia, but we had asked about a fruit tree. He said that pear trees do well in our region and should be fairly easy for us to care for. Pears! In our yard! Brian is going to talk to him about planting. He said he will plant whatever we want him to, but most of this could be done on our own.
We are thinking of taking the fall/winter to brainstorm about what we want to plant next year. I do want a good deal of flat/grass area for Mina to run around on, but I would also like to make use of the space for growing food/herbs. This is all fairly new to us.
I'm still not happy with our front yard. I was, but then I have had a hard time keeping up on weeding it and we never got good mulch down. Our poor small/low pine bush got fried in the hot heatwave days, despite watering a couple of times a day. I'm hoping the small low lilac comes back next year. There is a chance. We spent some time at Mahoney's selecting plants with a gardener there, picking things that wouldn't get too big, but would hopefully withstand the high heat there. I would have loved azaleas, but they just cooked, just like the pine. Maybe we just need a sprinkler/timer in the worst of the summer heat to keep it from doing this? For the most part we were able to utilize our rain barrel to water our herb bed/plants. If we are going to do more of this, we may want another rain barrel (maybe under a gutter on the driveway side).
We got out of the habit of using the compost bin. I want to get back into that habit!
I'm excited to have a clean slate to work with, and a flat level area that (next year) Mina can run all over. Right now, it is off limits to let the grass grow.
Our yard looks HUGE now. It is really one of the bigger ones in our neighborhood given how it is on the side of our house and not in the back.
Some photos:
Our blank slate yard: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dancerjodi/9560716337/
Driveway strip: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dancerjodi/9560700639/in/set-72157611219069237
Front yard a couple of months ago:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dancerjodi/8998464705/in/set-72157611219069237
Front yard filler plants (the low pine bush in the left corner is now fried/dead unfortunately) - we get full sun here all day:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dancerjodi/9312386581/in/set-72157611219069237
Other projects that will come at some point: ripping up our driveway and replacing. Ripping up our back patio area and replacing. Replacing our rotting bulched doors (awkward, because they were built in a stupid way in the first place . . . we may need to just re-build in the same stupid way, just with new wood). New fencing around the yard. We need new gutters and new siding. It is nice to have outdoor stuff that other folks would do, and still remains strange to be paying other people to do work on our house given that we have done so much extensive stuff on our own. It is just the matter of money now (and the time to save it).
Indoors we have lots of things that we can pick on, but they are relatively short/indoor jobs. For instance, we still never painted the wood after things were stripped/replaced for our house to get deleaded. We have to scrape out and recaulk our bath tub. We need to paint and build out Mina's closet. We need to rip out, repair and build out Brian's closet. There are no lack of nice indoor fall/winter projects, for whenever we feel like tackling them.
They left space for beds/planting around the perimeters and there is grass seed everywhere else. We have to water for 20 minutes 2x a day to get it to survive. They even ripped out the little messy patch of weeds in our driveway between our property and the neighbor and put grass seed there. We had to run to Home Depot last night to buy a selection of splitters/hoses/sprinklers and timers to reliably wet everything.
The landscaper suggested some kind of smallish tree for near the front of the yard to provide shade/privacy for us when we are sitting on our front porch. He suggested a dogwood or magnolia, but we had asked about a fruit tree. He said that pear trees do well in our region and should be fairly easy for us to care for. Pears! In our yard! Brian is going to talk to him about planting. He said he will plant whatever we want him to, but most of this could be done on our own.
We are thinking of taking the fall/winter to brainstorm about what we want to plant next year. I do want a good deal of flat/grass area for Mina to run around on, but I would also like to make use of the space for growing food/herbs. This is all fairly new to us.
I'm still not happy with our front yard. I was, but then I have had a hard time keeping up on weeding it and we never got good mulch down. Our poor small/low pine bush got fried in the hot heatwave days, despite watering a couple of times a day. I'm hoping the small low lilac comes back next year. There is a chance. We spent some time at Mahoney's selecting plants with a gardener there, picking things that wouldn't get too big, but would hopefully withstand the high heat there. I would have loved azaleas, but they just cooked, just like the pine. Maybe we just need a sprinkler/timer in the worst of the summer heat to keep it from doing this? For the most part we were able to utilize our rain barrel to water our herb bed/plants. If we are going to do more of this, we may want another rain barrel (maybe under a gutter on the driveway side).
We got out of the habit of using the compost bin. I want to get back into that habit!
I'm excited to have a clean slate to work with, and a flat level area that (next year) Mina can run all over. Right now, it is off limits to let the grass grow.
Our yard looks HUGE now. It is really one of the bigger ones in our neighborhood given how it is on the side of our house and not in the back.
Some photos:
Our blank slate yard: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dancerjodi/9560716337/
Driveway strip: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dancerjodi/9560700639/in/set-72157611219069237
Front yard a couple of months ago:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dancerjodi/8998464705/in/set-72157611219069237
Front yard filler plants (the low pine bush in the left corner is now fried/dead unfortunately) - we get full sun here all day:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dancerjodi/9312386581/in/set-72157611219069237
Other projects that will come at some point: ripping up our driveway and replacing. Ripping up our back patio area and replacing. Replacing our rotting bulched doors (awkward, because they were built in a stupid way in the first place . . . we may need to just re-build in the same stupid way, just with new wood). New fencing around the yard. We need new gutters and new siding. It is nice to have outdoor stuff that other folks would do, and still remains strange to be paying other people to do work on our house given that we have done so much extensive stuff on our own. It is just the matter of money now (and the time to save it).
Indoors we have lots of things that we can pick on, but they are relatively short/indoor jobs. For instance, we still never painted the wood after things were stripped/replaced for our house to get deleaded. We have to scrape out and recaulk our bath tub. We need to paint and build out Mina's closet. We need to rip out, repair and build out Brian's closet. There are no lack of nice indoor fall/winter projects, for whenever we feel like tackling them.
