Here are some pics of the new yard, with it’s spring/summer growth! It looks really nice back there. It’s actually grown in even more since I took these…

Everything is done except for the lawn! It is so nice!! I don’t know what most of these plants are… Chad gave me the names of a bunch of them, I just don’t know which are which.

The rocks and dirt were delivered yesterday, and today they were all set up! It’s really coming along!
More really crappy pics! Might be about time to move beyond the $20 digicrapcam.

I have hired a nice young landscaper named Chad to work on the backyard. He has a lot of great ideas and is working really hard to get this mess into shape.

Here are some really crappy pictures! You can see that the compost bin has been moved to behind the garage, freeing up a lot of space over on the right. All of the grassy area has been tilled and is nice and level. He has drawn some lines where he will be putting the lawn, and the paths around a rock garden full of native plants. It’s very exciting watching this come slowly along!

Here’s a couple crappy new pics of the yard (click for big!)

Gravel path showing the ground cover filling in nicely

Deck and gazebo under the trees

Bird stuff in the trees

No more slab!

Lots of room to figure out what to do with… I want a bird bath

On a fluke, Tuesday night I emailed a guy who had a demolition ad on craigslist about removing the slab from the backyard. Well he came out yesterday and now it’s gone! I didn’t really expect that to happen so fast. So now I need to try and pull up a bit more of the multi layers of plastic down there and then get someone to till it, probably get more dirt or compost tilled in and then the lawn done. It’s getting there!

I haven’t updated this category in quite a while. There’s really not too much missing, but some work has been done. It’s been too hot to get much done though. I did finally finish the second planter box. I filled it up two lavendar plants, two plants with yellow flowers that I don’t remember the name of right now, and a bunch of white petunias. Everything else is still growing and nothing seems to be doing too poorly except for the gladiolas which I don’t think are going to amount to anything. Two are already withered and dried. The rest just don’t look so good. The lilies, though, look really nice, I think they will be blooming some time soon. The ajuga seems to die off often, but it always comes back ok. But that doesn’t help it spread out. The money wort is spreading ok. Some of it had some little yellow flowers. The backyard is still a mess with the weeds, but we are trying to get them out, as well as getting the ground leveled more. Still lots of work back there. I need to thin and replant the irises, but I am not sure how to do that.

Got pics back online today, there are a lot so I set up a gallery

http://moltenwords.net/gallery/

Last Friday, I did not get the compost center built. It wouldn’t cooperate. I did get a bunch of the dirt spread, but not all of it. I can’t remember what else got done, it didn’t feel like a productive day, altho I am sure it wasn’t as bad as it felt.

Since then, we have built the two planters and got one of them in place and filled, with gerbera daisies, hollyhock seeds (might be too late for that, but we’ll see what happens) and the transplanted creeping phlox, which will hopefully come back from the brink now that it is in full sun. I also planted some ajuga and miniature daisies over by the weeping pw. I still have a flat full of moneywort to plant.

The compost center did get build on Sunday. And filled with leaves! The area is nice and clean again. I need to finish up my roll of film and get it sent in….

Yesterday was a lot of work. We rented a uHaul pickup and took almost 4 yards of yard debris and scrap wood (2 truck fulls) to the recycling center. We then brought home 2 yards of soil blend and unloaded it, so we could return the truck last night. It may not sound like much, but damn that’s a lot of dirt. It is now in big piles scattered throughout the yard. Tomorrow is spreading day.

Today, I finished the deck, painting on a cedar-tone waterproofing finish. That took almost 4 hours. I then went to Home Depot and bought some plants to plant in the new dirt and some additional parts to build the compost center. I also put together one of the large planter boxes for the back back yard.

Tomorrow, I build the compost center and spread the dirt and plant the plants. It is going to look so much nicer. The deck is already just 1000% better than it was 2 weeks ago. I still need a second coat of paint in the gazebo and to pull up the rest of the red rock. Ugh I hate that stuff.