Stump tuggin'

We continued the front garden project that we started yesterday, and we've made some great progress!

First, we finished building the second tier of the side garden. We dug out some of the slope and stacked two rows of stone pavers to create a retaining wall. Then we capped them off with a row of edgers.



I'm really happy with how this wall turned out! (I picture planting some phlox or something similar so that the flowers drape and pour over the wall.)

As often happens around here, our plans then took a little detour and instead of planting and mulching, we decided to rip out all of the dead stumps and dying bushes from the front of the porch.

The previous owners left behind a few unsightly stumps in the front yard.



Not pretty.

After looking at them for the last 10 months, we decided it was definitely time for them to go.



Luckily, we had a pickup truck, chain, and the help of our bff Josh. It was time to tug out some stumps!



After wrapping the chain around the stump, all it took was backing up the truck and the stumps came up pretty easily.



After the old stumps were out, we turned our attention to the half-dead, awkwardly placed evergreen and rhododendron bushes.



We figured while we were tuggin' stumps, we might as well give everything the heave-ho. Those two bushes came out pretty easily, and the change was already huge.



We were left with quite a mess, though. The back of the bushes had apparently been a dumping ground for random garbage. We found everything from an old diaper (seriously, one of the grossest things everrr) to a 3-foot long iron spike.



Some raking was all it took to get the area back in shape. After we had it cleaned up, we got out some twine and stretched it across to get a straight line.



Once we had the twine set to use as a guide, we started laying in the edger stones along the perimeter of the new garden bed.



We then implemented the very scientific method of standing on the stones to level them.



This was followed by the equally technical process of hitting the stones with a hammer to get them in line.



We ran out of edgers just before we could complete the border, but we laid out what we had leftover to get an idea of the end result.


After just a few hours of work today, the change to the front of the house was already pretty tremendous!



And because you know I can't live without a good before and after, let's take a look at where we're at now...

Before:


And after!!:


I'll be sure to keep ya'll updated when we get to planting. Anyone have recommendations for low-maintenance plants that do well in part sun/shade??

Spring cleaning!

It's been a while! Things have been so busy lately, between my starting a new job to stuff around the house, that I haven't had time to post anything. It's not that we haven't been doing anything though!

We're into April now, and after a seemingly endless winter, the enormous mountains of snow in the yard finally melted away. We've spent the last few weeks cleaning up the back and front yards from the mess of winter, raking leaves, picking up sticks, trimming hedges, etc. We filled about 60 paper leaf bags with yard waste!

This week, we turned our attention to the gardens in the front of the house. First, Branden dug out a garden on the side of the porch.



Then he laid and buried a pipe to direct water away from the house. The pipe was covered with rocks to help with irrigation.



We took a trip to Home Depot (where else??) and picked up some pavers, edgers, and a couple of new bushes.



We added the edger stones to the garden border. The larger paver stones we added to the front of the garden as a retaining wall, keeping the soil in place. Since the yard slopes so heavily, we're building a couple of levels of garden beds, held in place with the paver stones.



I picked out two azalea bushes and a blue hydrangea, which is my absolute favorite!



We picked up more edgers today and plan on continuing the stones all around the front of the porch. The plan is to lay the rest of the edgers, plant the shrubs, and spread the mulch tomorrow. It's going to make such a huge improvement to the front of the house!

We've also been making smaller changes around the backyard. Remember when we had hundreds of pounds of ice blocks fall from the roof onto our glass patio table and grill? After the snow melted, we were left with this mound of shattered glass:



The glass luckily stayed pretty contained in the snow and ice, so we were able to clean up the mess pretty easily. We discovered that our grill had also suffered a similar fate:



Since we love having backyard barbeques, Branden headed out to Home Depot and came home with a shiny new replacement:



We've already used it quite a few times this year! Gas is so much easier to work with than charcoal... I don't think we'll ever go back. We're still on the lookout for a new patio table though!

For the last couple of months I've been dreaming of having a fire pit in the backyard. I love roasting marshmallows, making s'mores, and just sitting around a fire on a summer night. So this week while I was at work (and Branden was home on vacation) I came home to find this set up in the backyard:



I want to get some low, comfy Adirondack chairs so we can lounge around the fire all through the summer. Can't wait!

I'll post more pictures of the garden process soon. It's so nice to be able to get outside in the sunshine and get our hands dirty again!