March 28th - Cremation of the Tumbleweeds

We're doing landscaping. Again. I was just looking at pictures of the yard from last year and wanted to cry because we had it to a certain point, left it and then all our trenches filled back up with dirt and the weeds came back with an angry vengeance. But what is done is done! And all we can do is get to work. 

Our neighbors had a great way of getting rid of weeds: burning them! So we followed suit. We got a burn permit and one of those huge metal barrels and went nuts. I started in the front yard, raking tumbleweeds into piles. 

This is where I left off on Tuesday

On Saturday we started again. Skylar got the fire going and I tried to get the tumbleweeds all piled together so we could chuck em in the barrel

Progress pic. We got the side of the house done and still had all the back

Oops

We had to dump out the ash two different times because there was so much that it would start to stifle the fire.

Finished. Finally.

 

Really we got going on all of this because we have a landscaping designer coming by to help us decide what the heck to do. Excited to see what the plan will be and for the upcoming posts! Here we go again!

January 31st - Blinds: Making Others Blind to Your Nakedness

Thought we were gone? Well you were wrong! Still things to take care of in our house even if it has been a year since we moved in (almost). Landscaping still didn't get done. I would love to say we even got halfway there but no. Didn't happen. But after the tax return comes in and the weather gets even warmer (for out here in Utah), we'll be out working again trying to get in the sprinklers and sod.

But first! Blinds! Skylar is the best. We saved several hundred dollars by installing the blinds ourselves and by ourselves I mean Skylar. We went through Budget Blinds, had the product installed right to our door, Skylar watched a few youtube tutorials and now we have a home that has an added measure of privacy. So excited!

May 24th - Tiller and Trenches

This week we got a trencher to get ready to bury our sprinkler pipes. We'll have to get it again because we weren't quite able to finish before we had to return it. On Saturday Jon and Debbie came to visit and brought down the tiller so we could make quick work of the weeds and just rake them up and dump them in the lot across the street. 

We also raked a bunch of rocks but we didn't do too much since the trenches will just turn up more rocks. We tried to mostly get the bigs ones and get rid of weeds.

Big shout out to our great friend Monte for letting us use his landscaping rakes to get the rocks out of the way, Brandon our neighbor for picking up the trencher for us through a source that we were able to use free of charge, and Jon and Debbie for helping out and bringing down the tiller.

The size of rocks we've been digging out

That my friends is a tiller. What a beautiful piece of modern machinery

Remember the area of yard that Brillante was helping with? Yeah I dug up all the weeds (before we had the tiller) and we raked them all up today

The first section we worked on before it was tilled. Almost done

The gas man came by and marked where the line was at so we don't have any accidents there

Trenches

Another giant rock

The mountains may be beautiful but they create issues as far as landscaping goes

May 17th - Sprinkler System Meeting

We met with Nathan on Saturday and he explained to us how the sprinkler system is set-up, installed, trouble-shooted, yada yada yada. And it sounded about like that to me. I've decided I'm a visual person so explaining things verbally is wasted on me. 

We did find out that we won't need to de-rock the yard and median (I'm calling it that for lack of a better name) until after we have trenched for the sprinklers. Also, I found out that installing a sprinkler system takes time, hard work, brains and I really hope I don't some how manage to screw it up. Let's be honest here though, Skylar is going to do all the thinking and I'll throw rocks into the empty lot across the street so I think we will be okay.

We're still deweeding for now though. Hopefully next Saturday, we will be far enough along that we can rent a trencher and go to town. Then put in the sprinklers, de-rock, bury everything and go from there. We will see my friends. We will see.

We're getting further

Still a lot to do though

And we have to do this side too. That's right two sides

Come stay at our house and we'll put you to work! Only part of the reason why we love the Selfs: good friends do each others' yard work.

This was after a few hours of work on the area Brillante was just at. We're getting there

The first side: how much we have left

A shot from the beginning. We're getting there

Well. Let's see how next Saturday goes

May 10th - Yard work

You know all those people who say they love yard work? They can't possibly be talking about this kind of yard work.

As with most things that we have done with the house, I have no idea what is actually going on (until after I've done it a few times). I was under the impression that if we got into the house before we had to do landscaping, then we could do it at our leisure. I was, sadly, mistaken. When we rolled our construction loan over to a normal mortgage loan, we signed a contract saying that we would have the landscaping done on June 1st. Say what?! Normally it takes about 2 months Nathan told us and we have, now, about 2 weeks. HA! But we will get what we can done in that amount of time. Apparently the penalty is that if we don't have it finished by then, USDA reserves the right to hire an outside company to do the landscaping with our money. (I think anyway. That could be slightly off).

We were blessed with a rock garden for a front yard. What we need to do is: dig up all the weeds, trench for the sprinkler system, install the sprinkler system, test it, bury all the pipes, de-rock the rock garden, lay sod and hope at that point everything works so that all the grass doesn't die.

Yard work. This was not what I had in mind.

All these weeds has gots to go

And all these rocks has gots to go too

Our yard which is deweeded and just needs to be derocked

See Skylar all the way at the end of the walkway? This is how much further we have to go

Yikes.