projects

We should have had these up earlier, but we’ve been busy playing with our new toy. Once we get that figured out, we should start getting better photos of everything. But I digress….

Here are the “before” pictures of our backyard beds and some shots of the prep work going into them. This past Saturday, we hauled 6 truck-loads of dirt back there (3 cubic yards total). Reasons for all the dirt is three-fold: 1) Raise the base levels of the beds to add a little drama and break up the flatness 2) Fix a few minor drainage issues of pooling water and 3) Amend the soil to provide a better environment for everything we’re putting in.

Aside from having to fix a busted sprinkler head (more like a geyser), it was actually a lot easier than I expected. Danny and I muscled the dirt to the back. Jenny spread it out and directed us around. And Wendy located all the sprinkler heads so they didn’t get covered. All-in-all it took about 7 hours and several pitchers of iced tea to get completely done.

We haven’t heard anything yet this week, but we’re still expecting our plants either this coming weekend or sometime next week. We can’t say it enough, but we really appreciate what Nancy, Jack, Danny and Jenny are doing for us!

Those of you who know us are well aware of the state of our backyard flowerbeds. By state I mean the leftist weed regime that has annexed all 4 flower beds and begun a blitzkrieg into the grass. Fear not…all is not lost! Our super-great family friends (Hi Nancy & Jack!) have come to our rescue.

This weekend, we’ll kill all the weeds and bring in garden mix to raise the base level of the beds by 6 – 8 inches and fix the drainage problems the beds have. Next weekend, our plants should be here! We’ve got a couple of great neighbors (Hi Danny & Jenny!) that will be helping out with the entire thing. We owe them many a steak dinner for it too. (Although they owe us big-time for the whole dig-the-grass-out-of-the-yard project, so I guess we’ll be even =)). We’ll also be patching up the lawn in a few places where something happened to the grass (dogs, heat, weeds, whatever happens to lawns you know!?).

We’ll post before, during, and after pictures as we get stuff done so you can all see the progress. The before’s should be up later tonight.