My front yard has been the bane of my existence as a homeowner. Well, the back yard is as well, but at least it is behind a fence so no one but me can really see it. The front yard gets me in trouble with the homeowners association all the time (“your lawn isn’t flourishing”) – and honestly, I have to admit, they’ve been patient with me about it for the last nine years. It doesn’t bother them near as much, however, as it bothers me. I have to look at it every day when I come home, when I get the mail, well…. you know the drill.
When I bought this home, the builders’ landscapers must have been the cheapest, laziest landscapers known to men because they put all of maybe one inch of topsoil on a hard clay base for the “lawn” and the hill was angled such that all the soil just ran off with the rain – forget trying to maneuver a mower across it – and watering it meant watching water trickle down the drain. So, one year, I took out the lawn. I tried covering it all with bark and low-growing plants. The weeds just came back through the bark and the yard just looked even more messy. Fail.
The driveway is also narrower than most and we tried to extend it with pavers and sand. Cody, my son-in-law, and my daughter, Cindy worked really hard on this one summer but the weeds just kept coming back up through the landscape fabric barrier designed to prevent weeds. Fail.
So I sat and stared at this yard for a long time. A very long time. I watched a lot of landscaping shows on HGTV. I sat outside and stared some more and formulated plans for it and discussed it with my neighbors. Ad nauseum. I’m sure they probably wondered if I’d ever get around to it.
I always had the excuse that there was no one to help me with my yard. Not entirely true as my daughter and son-in-law have helped numerous times. But they have a busy family and really all my design ideas in the past were mammoth fails because I could never finish them.
Then along came my Honey.
And along came my determination to finally get this done. Plus, if I’d known how cheap it was to do all this, I would have done it sooner.
I drew out my own landscaping plan the old school way – on paper, with pencil. No fancy software required. Just a tape measure.
We started by pulling out a row of cedar hedge bushes that were extremely overgrown and crowding the side yard. Actually, my Honey did that one day while I was gone. Came in with a chain saw and a pickup and voila, they were gone.
Then we had the stumps to contend with. He came back with a chain this time, and his pickup, and voila, with a couple tugs, they were gone too.
Yesterday was the big push to get most of the work done. My honey arrived, coffee in hand for us both, with his pickup and we went and got the retaining wall blocks – all 45 of them – and edger bricks – all 20 of them – which he hand-loaded onto his truck and unloaded into my driveway.
After that we went to the local nursery that sells dirt and rocks and got a yard of awesome topsoil and four bags of 7/8 river rock.
We came home and got to work. We cleared out the icky yard, the overgrown vinca ground cover, and laid the retaining wall blocks. Well, my Honey did the wall blocks. And the hacking of the overgrown ground cover. And the shoveling. And…just so you know… I was firmly instructed by my youngest and my Honey that I’m not allowed to lift or overdo it as I’ll hurt my back again. So, I followed behind him and filled in with the dirt. I raked, he shoveled. And he shoveled and shoveled. A whole yard of dirt out of the back of his truck.
We also had to move the old pavers out of the way to make room for the new design. Well, my Honey moved them. Finally, after we got the flowerbed done, we were ready to do the pavers. We lined things up and laid them, and then he dumped the river rock for me to fill in.
The last phase of this work will be finished over the next couple weekends. We have to get rid of the last of the bad dirt along the side where the remaining hedges are, lay some more edgers, and then spread and roll the rest of the topsoil. After that, we’ll plant grass seed and my yard will be the jewel of the street. Finally.
A semi-before picture.
The semi-finished result.
My Honey sitting down on the front porch after a hard day’s work.
Last night after we came home from returning trucks, removing dirt from our bodies and such, we sat on the front porch and had our take-out dinner. It was awesome. I look forward to the days when the yard is all complete and we can enjoy our summer sitting there watching the grandkids play in the street or ride bikes, the dogs chase balls (he has a Golden), or just quietly enjoying each other’s company.
Life is good.
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