May 26th - Take that Weeds!

Alright. It's happened. The bulk of the weeding is finished. Now it's just keeping them AWAY. Let's take a look at our checklist, shall we?

Weeding the yard and parking strips
Digging out the trenches we dug last year
(Deciding if we need all the trenches we have or need to make a few new ones)
Putting in the sprinklers (pipes and heads)
Keeping the weeds away
De-rocking the yard
Installing sod
Installing trees, plants and bushes

All the weeds left are in the trenches which will be dug out so who cares about pulling them by hand. Amiright? 

Before and afters, please.

Look out trenches, I'm coming for you.

May 23rd - Creeping Up on the Weeds

One park strip at a time. All this week while, Skylar is working, I've been out in the yard. Weeding, raking, tilling, trying to make some progress on the sad condition of our once weedless yard. But we continue on! 

Today almost felt like when we were back working on the houses. We had a goal, we worked until we were done and it felt like we made a decent amount of progress. Our old supervisor Nathan just happened to be visiting a friend in our neighborhood so he even stopped by!

So here is our checklist as far as I know:

Digging out the trenches we dug last year
(Deciding if we need all the trenches we have or need to make a few new ones)
Putting in the sprinklers (pipes and heads)
Keeping the weeds away
De-rocking the yard
Installing sod
Installing trees, plants and bushes

Somewhere in there we also want to dig out the backyard. We'll use some of that dirt to fill in areas that aren't quite high enough for level ground so that needs to come just before installing sod. 

Progress. Progress.

The yard up until Tuesday

What is left (not doing all of it this year)

The front park strip

One of the other park strips

Last park strip

Mid-raking of the front park strip

After picture: looking good

Freaking weeds

Just the beginning of the pile...

May 9th - Readying the Yard

The title is somewhat redundant, since we've been readying the yard for a year now. But really what it's coming down to is getting rid of weeds, rocks and trying to keep those things at bay until we lay (drum roll, please) SOD! 

We had Jen Klingonsmith from Saratoga Blooms come and do a yard consultation for us. She is fantastic. It's more difficult to grow in Saratoga Springs because of the salinity of the secondary water and because the ground itself hasn't been worked like other areas in Utah County. For that reason she has a list of tried and true plants that grow in our area. Not only that but she designs a landscape for your yard that you can implement at your pace. So now we're in the process of getting sod, trees and possibly shrubs if we have funds for that. We're just doing the front right now but hoping to get the back done next year.

Right now we're trying to finish digging out the backyard how we want, getting all the areas leveled out that we will be finishing up this summer, installing sprinklers and we'll see from there.

After tilling one side of the front yard

The park strip. Yikes

The other side before tilling

After raking/wedding

After raking and weeding the other side

The back yard that we have left. We burned all the tumbleweeds and it made room for all the new weeds to come in. Never ends.

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!