Back to our regularly scheduled programming...

Done with the hormonal moods, at least for the time being, and ready to brag about the 9.5 hour day of heavy labor Derek & I put in a couple weeks ago.  

(See the huge lavender behind the cute superhero?)

When we moved into our house, the yard was massively overgrown.  The front had 6 foot wide lavender bushes that had never been trimmed, along with tons of other ground cover and shrubs that needed serious attention.  One side of the house was covered in honeysuckle vines (that were, in fact, holding up the fence), and some other unknown creepers.  The grass was (I should say is) filled with morning glory (spawn of Satan, I tell ya), dandelions, and wild violets. 

The backyard was the biggest travesty: a huge section of grass right in the middle of the yard had been ripped out to make way for a garden planter that was mostly full of weeds and mint (which is essentially a weed itself). 

A third of the yard was a dog-run made with chicken wire and chain-link fence, filled with dirty straw and doggy doo-doo. 

The playground had about 4" of sand full of cat scat, dead mice, dead birds, and other unpleasantries.  Essentially, the yard was a freakin' horrorscape. 

In the Spring, we rented a dumpster from the city, and put in about 100 hours all told cutting down dead trees, ripping up weeds, pulling out railroad ties (they leach arsenic into the soil and the mice/rats love to make their homes in them), and sundry other tasks. 

Gram Bert takes care of us: taught us how to chop down the tree safely and bought us a chainsaw.  That chainsaw was my bestie for a few weeks...

We filled that dumpster within an inch of it's life--and still had more yard waste leftover.  Our neighbor kindly took the last of the yard bags to the dump just last week.

We also freecycled the sand in the playground, and transplanted some roses from the backyard to the front.  Finally, we decided to put grass in in the areas that we had cleared.  Deciding to do it proved much easier than actually doing it.

First, I had to build sifters since most of the area to be seeded in the front was full of smooth landscaping pebbles.  I felt pretty macho by the time I was done...

Shoveling and sifting the rocks was incredibly hard work.  I'm surprised that our backs didn't give since we were putting hours of each day into sifting.

 I built a little one so the kids could help.  They did some work, but in the end, it was just faster for Derek & I to tag team: one shovel, one sift, both lug to rock pile.

 Our rock pile tripled.  If we had somewhere to use it, we would, but we want to do mostly grass and mulch throughout the yard.  Anyone want some rocks?

 You can see here how it looked sans lavender, but before sifting rocks.

We finally finished sifting, and then had to prep the ground.  We tried leveling it by hand some, but knew we were gonna hit it with a tiller, so didn't do too much.

As you can see, we had to redo some of the sprinkler system.  I was super nervous about this part, despite my brother-in-law kindly teaching us how to work with the PVC.  I didn't want to mess up. 

I was pretty stoked when I found that the pipes had originally been laid for grass (our neighbor later told us that it had originally been all grass without the excessive landscaping).  For the most part, I just had to unscrew the tubing and put in a few sprinkler heads.  Then we tilled in some manure, leveled, and put down seed and peat moss.

In only about 8 days, we were already seeing small shoots of grass!  It was so exciting!  After that long, hard Saturday, and the preceding weeks and years, we were finally seeing some major progress on the yard.

 Good bye witch's circle (as we called this weird round planter that took up a third of the front)...

Hello beautiful green grass!  I'll have to post more pictures once it starts to really fill in.  And I haven't even taken any of the back yet.

 

Anyone want some decorative pebbles?  My sister has claimed half of what's left--the rest is up for grabs...  Now if the weather will just stay nice for a few more weeks, the grass will be well-established and we can move on to the next project: putting in some nice playground mulch under the swings so the kids don't keep killing themselves on the hard earth and rocks...  :)