Monday, April 16, 2012

outside...

As the weather warms up here in the Midwest, I am being forced to work we are doing more outside work...  This past weekend I was gone Saturday from 8am and didn't return home until after 5pm...

"Someone" decided to do some planning and working on his own... I was surprised to come home to this..



Adding a step (or two) will help...
Sunday morning, I was asked nicely if I could help with some outside work, I was told to drink my tea, eat my breakfast and come on outside... ugh...

Remember, we started with this...

A partial walkway...
leaves everywhere...
no grass...

Oh wait!!  Did you notice the fence?  It's new!!   Since that happened a couple of weekends ago, lets start there...



Isn't it nice...  We needed to add the fence in order to be able to get dirt to stay IN the yard and not wash down the hill...

and then Rich and Ryan shoveled  dirt into the front yard.. This was 11 scoops of dirt dropped into our Chevy truck...

more dirt...
So now we have a fence and dirt... Remember that before photo?

Leaves, no grass, and more leaves... I don't know when the previous owners raked, but it wasn't anytime in the last 10 years...These leaves were matted down...into a leaf carpet...ugh...

I raked these....

Some came from the side of the garage...

Some from around the steps..


And now after working all day yesterday, in the rain, we have two stone walls...filled with dirt... two new steps...grass seed and straw...  and a pad of concrete pavers for the trash can..

Now we need to research plantings for those areas...We know absolutely nothing about plants..we need something that will grow in partial afternoon sun and that won't die easily...Hostas maybe? We did manage to save the Clematis on the right..I'm not a big fan of the lattice structure, but it's woven so tight on it I don't know if we can change it... We are open to any ideas on plantings.. Grapes are going in on the right..and the cat door is going to be closed up..I'm pretty sure that's where all the kittens are being produced...lol

Grass is already starting to grow in front of the house and hopefully with all the rain we got in the last two days the grass under all that straw will germinate and start growing...

And now we move to the back...

We've had more visitors show up...

FREE KITTENS... They are approximately4 weeks old now.  They were born under the steps below our bedroom window and I have seen 3 so far...this one has the bluest eyes... They should be ready to be adopted soon!!

And the same three deer show up every day unless it's raining or windy...  They are very comfortable and don't mind us being on the deck snapping photos..

Now I need to go and make a birthday cake and get the house ready for company...It's my grandson's birthday tomorrow and we are hosting tonight with BBQ pork steaks, baked potatoes, fried corn and pineapple Birthday cake...

Nancy

2 comments:

krisgray said...

Most of our yard was shade, before a huge oak fell on our fence! Hostas, bleeding hearts (come up early but often die back in the hot hot hot summer and come back next year), coral bells (lots of colorful foliage varieties to choose), if you wanted a little structure year round maybe a dwarf hydrangea shrub in the fence corner. Of course, the great thing about shrubs is that they like to be pruned so you can keep them at a size you like.

If you would rather not deal with mulch, then creeping jenny is a great little ground cover with light green/yellowish foliage that can lighten up a shady spot. It spreads along the top of the ground so it's easy to remove from spots where you don't want it growing.

Pat said...

WOW....the work never ends, does it? :( I'm sure an area nursery would answer your questions about what would grow well there and also could steer you toward low-maintenance plants, too. (I like low-maintenance!!!) I'm sure it is going to look very pretty really soon. :)