Lanscaping Phase #1

It has all begun. Brian from Horizon Landscaping chose a couple companies to complete some of the backyard projects that need to be finished before he gets going on the landscaping.  So last week, during the hottest week this year we had four guys out in our yard digging up trees and also digging trenches for the new irrigation.  I swear the heat index was like 110 degrees, poor guys.  They were here for about 7 hours and this is what we are left with…

They basically removed all of the hedges including all of their roots.  Also they added the much needed irrigation, including three drains that will remove the water from our backyard and let it drain out to the sewage system at the street.

Here is drain #1.

Here is #2 that Char man is checking out.

and #3.

Our yard is basically a big dirt pit right now, nothing pretty to look at.  It has to get a little worse before it gets better though!

Our yard does seems a lot bigger now without all of the hedges.

This is where the new magnolia trees will go.  We don’t necessarily want something so big in the yard, but we want the privacy from the neighbors, so the magnolias will be perfect.

We can’t wait for Brian to come out on Tuesday to plant the new trees and re-sod the yard.  We also are thinking about putting a garden in one of the corners back here and giving the fence a face lift.  Don’t worry we will keep you updated!

Yardwork

Justin has been working extra hard on our lawn lately.  I swear we’re in a neighborhood competition for the best lawn that I don’t know about.  He has been outside 24/7 every weekend working away.  I will share what he has been up to so far.

He re-sodded the entire yard!  I came home one weekend to this.

Two pallets! I am going to let you in on a secret… our yard is not that big.  I was wondering if he would actually need this much sod and it turned out he used every piece.  He rented a huge tiller from Lowes.

Of course I took a picture of it. I also got a few pictures of Justin hard at work.

He did a great job, looks awesome.  He also dug out the stumps from the trees he cut down last week and planted this cute tree.

He wasn’t done there, he also dug two trenches that went out toward the corners of our yard. He added drain pipes that connected to our gutter drains off of our back patio.  He did this because when it rained we had a lake on our back patio.

He worked his butt off and the drain pipes worked well, it has rained since and we have no more lake! woo hoo!

I also added some flowers out back.

This stand was a gift from Sandy(love it) and the plant is a gift from Justin’s grandma.

I think the backyard is coming together.  Now it is safe for the dogs and pretty for us to look at.

Justin hates trees

I decided that Justin if not a big fan of trees. He has decided to cut some down and trim some up.  First he decided to cut down the two little holly trees in the back yard.  Apparently all the trees we have are not very dog friendly.  The holly berries are poisonous to dogs and our dogs eat everything… EVERYTHING.  Zack walks around the yard eating grass like a cow.  So the holly trees had to go:(  Here they are before…

This is what they look like now…

Little stumps.   We will dig out the stumps soon, just wanted to get rid of the berries asap.

Here’s Char, don’t blink you’ll miss him.  He’s fasttt.

As you can see there are no more trees/berries.  Next I noticed that Justin trimmed up the sago palms we have in our front yard.  These are also an issue since the sago palms have huge seeds that are also very toxic to dogs.  So we will most likely take them out as well.  In the mean time Justin trimmed them up.  You can see we have three…

Now they look like this…

Poor little babies lost all of their palms.  They were all dead.

So no more palms.  We will see if the actual trees will be staying or if we will take those out as well.