Yard Progress

The house, as it looked in March.

 APRIL 2011

First order of business was to remove part of the ag fence, in order to let my "tractor" through.  I also cut back a bunch of trumpet vine.

MAY 2011

There were four living 80+ year old spirea right next to the house.  We (and by we, I mean mostly my dad) divided two of them into seven individual shrubs and moved them to the crest of the hill next to the crown vetch.  They were cut back too much by previous tenants, and they were either going to die in place, die in transplantation, or maybe they'll live.

We also removed the weeds and grass from a portion of the yard and replaced with layers of cardboard, newspaper, and mulch (which the guys at Lawrence Tree Service donated to my efforts).  This mulch will eventually be covered with dark finish mulch, but that may not be until next year.

The south side of the house needed to be regraded a bit, have stones relocated, and the remaining spirea shrubs removed.  The hay, which was sold to me as straw, was one of two bales I bought before I knew how to get free mulch.  My roundup is now taking care of the hay sprouts.

On the north side was a lot of random concrete with no rhyme or reason and the stepping stones were misaligned, so we mulched over the random concrete to create a path and aligned the stones with the concrete path we created.

 JUNE 2011

My day laborer working on the south side of the house.

The remaining (live) two spirea shrubs were divided into six new shrubs and transplanted in front of the propane tank, with the intention that they will eventually hide the submarine.  We used soil from the regrading to fill in a large hole in the yard (where the hay is).

Ta-da!  The smooth, clean, south side.

Dad taking a mojito break after all the work.

The yard between the spirea and the house on the east side.  Eventually, the area around the spirea will also be mulch instead of the cocktail of clover, poison ivy, and trumpet vine now growing.

My archeological finds from the yard.