yard progress

What I really should have titled this post is "what we've been up to alllll summer" but yard progress is probably more positive and accurate. ;)

When we bought our house last summer, it was mid August and as any first time home buyer can attest to, we put pretty much everything we had into closing on our house that the empty dirt lot it sat on was not a huge priority at the time. So we left it for the winter with plans to work on it this summer. When March came around, the weeds came on full force! I can't tell you how many times I have weeded our yard since then but it is a good few handfuls. After getting a few estimates to have a sprinkler system put in, we decided to save money and do it ourselves. At the time it sounded like a GREAT idea and now that it is over I'm still so glad we did but if you would have asked us during the last couple months, yeaaaahhh notsomuch. It was a TON of work and most days, we felt way in over our heads. I'm just so grateful to have a handy husband and one who is also fabulous at researching everything he doe. It is because of these two things that we have a full working sprinkler system that turned out fantastic! Also thanks to a handy father-in-law as well!

 

Aaaanyway, back to the lot of work part... I am not going to lie, it has been really hard on this pregnant body of mine. Great exercise definitely but a lot of additional aches and pains for sure. Nic and his dad originally rented a trencher which would have been a huge lifesaver but it turns out it wasn't set at a low enough setting for the area we live in (which we did not know at the time) and if we didn't want our pipes to potentially freeze in the winter (that would be a negatory ghost-rider), we needed to make sure they were at least 12 inches deep. Cue the weeks of digging by hand which is honestly what made the project last as long as it did! Thankfully, after a couple months of working nights and weekends and many trips to Home Depot that looked something like this ...

It is finally finished!!

Prior to this little sprinkler project we decided to landscape with castle brick as well. Most of our neighbors have the river rock look goin' on and while there is nothing wrong with that, we wanted ours to look different than the rest. Castle brick requires nice clean even lines (hence why we love the look) but also takes longer to finish than plunking a few river rocks next to each other for a more natural look. On Saturday we finally finished, the backyard! As in working sprinkler system, flower beds finished (minus the flowers or trees in them which we will hopefully get on a good deal in the Fall), and planted GRASS!! We cheers-ed to a job well done with ice cream cones and have had a dance party four times a day when those sprinklers come on to water the seed. Here's to a luscious lawn back there in hopefully a month or so!

Now on to the weeding, de-rocking, castle brick straitening, rock and mulch planter box filling days ahead in the front yard.

But for now, lets just celebrate the backyard!!!! :)