Continuing the Yard Work

I'm almost afraid to post this blog. Last year I posted a blog about beginning yard work. We had had some issues with our yard, and so we decided to kill off our entire lawn, and begin again.

The blog entry marked our first real attempt to do anything with our yard. We ran into so many stumbling blocks, that very soon after that blog entry, all work on the yard stopped. I ended up looking at my ugly yard out my window for yet another year. My kids have not had a back yard to play in for two years now. Whenever they want to play outside, they never can because it is always covered in mud and dog poop.

Well this year we are really starting to move on the yard. I started by cleaning all of the dog poop out of the yard- Yuck!! That is definitely my worst spring cleaning chore. Then I raked all of the leaves that we had not raked last year. Under all of that, I found the piles of compost that we had taken back last year. I raked all of the compost out. My sister-in-law came over and helped me dig up the bushes in our backyard, and one of the rosebushes in the front yard, and get them into the dumpster. And then we had a delivery.

I called the equestrian park, and they delivered an enormous dump truck load of manure. This picture does not even come close to showing how enormous this pile of poop was (or how bad it smelled). I spent a couple of days wheelbarrowing (not a word, but you get the idea) the stuff all around the yard. My neighbors loved me!!

Every year for Christmas, we give homemade gifts, or gifts of service as our family gifts. This last year, we were lucky enough to have my brother and sister-in-law draw our names. For our present, they gave us a calendar and told us to mark the days that we needed them to come and help us with our yard. They have an enormous yard, and they have put a lot of time and money into gardening. They brought their new tiller over, and my brother tilled in all that nourishing junk we had put on our dirt. Hopefully we will have the healthiest lawn on the block!!

When we first moved into our house, my niece tried to climb our back fence, and one of the main supports snapped in two. We finally bought the wood to replace it last year, and it sat by the side of our house all winter long. The mess beside the wood is our new antenna that will hopefully be put up in the next few weeks.

Today, we finally fixed the fence. Here is my incredibly hot hubby working hard to put the main support in.

And here is my handiwork in progress. Our neighbors had Rottweilers, and they would jump against the fence regularly. They finally just nailed particleboard along all the fences. When the new owners moved in and took down the particleboard, it left gaping holes in our fence. I had to put up the new fence boards. The new boards were thinner than the old boards, so I had to put pieces of wood on the backs to make sure the new boards were flush with the old ones. I am not handy, but I was pretty pleased with the results when I finished.

We still have a little work to do on the fence, but we need to get into the neighbors yard to finish. Hopefully that will happen this week, and then the plan is to stain the fence next weekend. The weekend after that we plan to put in our sprinkler system, and then we get to level the ground and plant our yard. I am so excited. It is finally all coming together. I have all my little plants growing in pots, waiting to be put into my new garden.