When we bought the house the entire backyard was covered in 2+ years of leaves, which had killed any grass that had once grown back there. My mom raked them all up one afternoon. Moms are seriously the best.
Here's an aerial shot of the backyard when we first bought the place. (And by "aerial" we mean "from the bathroom balcony." Because we are classy.)
And yes, we did indeed tear down that garage and build a new one. That remains one of our most trying projects to date, but we love the end result!
Then we had a mound of dirt (from digging out a foundation) in our yard from July - May. We also had a trench through our yard from the garage to our back door, which I navigated in 3" heels without a sidewalk for those 10 months. I only sunk in the mud and ended up in tears on a few occasions, so we'll go ahead and call it a successful adventure.
Here's our yard as it looks today. Slightly greener, no?
We still have a long ways to go and a lot of plants to fill in and some more seed to put down. But we love spending time out there now, which we definitely couldn't say up until last year.
Someday, we'll add a patio and some furniture and the perennials will have filled in the beds (unless the dogs kill them all first).
Until then we'll just eat our BBQ dinners in our camp chairs and be glad we have grass under our feet.
That and we'll keep our fingers crossed that it stops raining, because at the rate its been coming down for the past week our entire yard might just float away before then.
What's your favorite thing you've done for your outdoor living spaces? A patio? Outdoor kitchen? Pool? Or just gotten some grass to grow (which is pretty great in our book)?
when we bought our house, the previous owners had a 30 by 60 fenced in garden area, complete with raised weed beds, overgrown weeds, random plants and vegetables planted here and there. They had also gone the natural route in another portion of our backyard. During our first summer, the backyard looked like the amazon jungle. I sold off the fencing, dug up the flower beds, picked out all of the rocks, tilled the dirt, and planted grass in both areas. Today, our backyard is grassy and under control. Simple looking, but makes me happy.
ReplyDeleteAnything done in my yard thus far has been a small victory, but...
ReplyDeleteRipped down the "shack" that had half collapsed during the winter.
Replaced the painted tire flower bed at the end of the driveway with half whiskey barrel.
Cleared out the dead stuff from half of our tree line.
For our first spring/summer, it's not too bad!
What a great transformation. I love the rain garden in our current home. It made a huge difference.
ReplyDeleteCorey - isn't it amazing how much work it can take just to get a yard ready for grass??
ReplyDeleteAshley - a painted tire?? The epitome of classy. I love it. : )
Kim - I hope my garden looks like your rain garden some day!! We have a long long way to go....longer if my dogs keep sitting on all the plants.
Looks so much better! Isn't it amazing what a difference some green grass makes? :)
ReplyDeleteOur biggest achievement was probably digging up the cement patio the previous owner had literally buried, which gave us alot of nice entertaining space and got rid of the huge "weed garden" that was there before. Soo much better. Why they buried it, we'll never know.
~Chelsea
It looks so much better! We built a deck, ripped out a sandbox, used the sand to put down a cazillion patio pavers and put on deck steps, planted flower beds, an arch with grapes and climbing roses, planted I think now 7 arborvitae trees, mums between them and put in a bunch of hostas up by the house. This summer, we are trying to finish off the expanded patio space we added last year and need to replace some trees planted by that that did not survive the winter. We are going to move the rain barrel and the list goes on! :)
ReplyDeleteWow what a transformation! In our current yard it has been the perennial beds and vegetable garden. Although I have the say the beds in the front of the house look better than the back because we share your pain of dogs trampling and digging up things. Is is weird that we incorporated a plant free dog path at the back of the beds because we knew they would run back there no matter what we did?
ReplyDeleteLooking good!!
ReplyDeleteI'm ready for some summer weather to enjoy the outdoors instead of this rainy cool stuff!
Just slightly greener, yes! lol. Flowers and other vegetation aside, I must agree that grass is a beautiful thing in itself.
ReplyDeleteWe haven't done a whole lot for our backyard (well, besides put in the sprinkler system and sod), but someday we'd like to expand our deck to improve the living space. Who knows when that will actually happen though!