Yard Work: "Bathroom" Garden

One of the first things I did when we moved to our house was to make the alcove formed by the house and Sunroom into a flower garden.  It has become known as the "Bathroom Garden" because it is outside the bathroom window.  We've had plans to make the paths cement so they didn't need to be mowed.  Last year, I started to dig out some dirt from the paths so that they would be the right height once the cement was in place, but didn't get it finished.  This year, the violets have taken over the area!

The Before:

The During.  (I started with the flower beds themselves and then worked some on the paths.  The boys helped me some, too.) :

The Continuation:

While Dan had the tiller out for the garden, I asked him to hit the paths and save me having to weed them all ♥

Frog "hiding" by the strawberry plants

It's getting there

The To-Do:

• dig out the excess dirt so that the ground is level with the path after adding the cement
• make sure the cement is still good
• make the cement 
• do the cement path
• enjoy!

Yard Work: Front Flower Bed

There is a flower bed in the front of the house that has pretty much been a weed bed since we moved in 13 years ago.  I just never felt motivated to do anything about it and sort of just forgot it was there!  Pretty sad, huh!?  I decided I wanted to make it into a real flower bed, so I tackled the weeds/grass that were growing in it.  Man, those things had BIG root systems!  My body couldn't handle doing it all at once, so I did it in stages.

Just a small start and I dug up an interesting treasure...

a shoe!  It was one William wore about 4 years ago.

End of day one

Easter lilies we just planted to the left and what looks like Strawberries in the front/right

The weeds I pulled/dug up

The ones still waiting!

Day two:

Weeds out

I had this roll of flower seeds for a while (bought it for a different project that didn't happen)
Hopefully they grow!

Seed mat laid out

Water the seeds

Working on the Playset

I have wanted to build a playset for the kids for about 5 years.  We've had materials for a couple years and even had a shell of one together.  It wasn't very sturdy/straight and I decided it wasn't in a very good spot, so we decided to start over.  We realized it wasn't a 2 person job, so we asked if my parents would be able to help.  This past week while it was in the 70's, we got to work!

I didn't get a before picture, so I looked through pictures from this summer to see if any showed the area

This was from July, so the area was even more overgrown now

This shows the dead tree and old burn barrel

Getting to work

Start of a burn pile

Andy helps Grandma clean out the undergrowth

Laying out the structure

This branch was hanging low in the way

It's coming together ☺

Making sure it's level

Yes, I did help, too!

Doesn't it look nice now?

As it is now.  The rest will probably wait until Spring

Our pile to burn - it's hard to see how big it really is!

Raking Leaves

I decided that today was a great day to get the leaves raked off our deck since it is about 70° today!













































































We lost one of Will's shoes twice! But thankfully we found them again!




















































Check out Emily's choice of shoes! She's been doing that lately. I'm not sure if it's because the match isn't nearby and she doesn't want to search for it or if she just likes the look!

Holes

Our frost-free hydrant was leaking somewhere and we had a bog in our front yard (the grass right around it was very lush!)




We turned the pump off (to stop the leak) and started digging to find the problem















Sarah was digging for "gold"


































I told Dan I felt like we were in the movie "Holes" (with Shia LaBeouf)










After having the pump on for an hour, the hole filled up with water again! (Later the hole had water whether the pump had been on or not)


















The red line is the water line.














Digging











More digging












To give you an idea of how deep the hole is, that is a regular shovel in the bottom of the hole, with the grass being the level ground.

















Here you can see the bend in the pipe going to the well/pump

It turned out that the pipe wasn't leaking, just the hydrant, so that was good!














Taking out the old hydrant















The old hydrant next to the new one

















We decided to put stones in the bottom to help with drainage

















Time to fill in the hole















The girls packing the dirt down

















All filled in















Spreading grass seed