Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Done Part 2

Ahhh, the joy of completing a project. However with this one, we had a little help. DUH!


When David and I bought our house, the backyard was "ick!". The "lawn" had more weeds than grass and we had a constant growth of mint growing in it. Except for every time I smelled the mint I wanted a mojito, we didn't like it. Plus the fences were covered in ivy. Like 6 inches deep on the fences and about 3 feet deep on the ground. I believe a play yard set was found half buried in it when we moved in. When we bought it, we had all the ivy removed and left it at that. Last summer, we it came back. Revenge of the ivy! Argh! It was almost ALL back!


So David and I spent a few months going at it. We did some research (what wife of a geek doesn't?) and found that the leaves are so waxy, you need to cut them back and spray just to get them to start to die off.


So one weekend we went out, started chopping away. Then David went through with weed killer. It worked, a bit died off. Of course, being who I am, we found out fairly quickly that I was allergic to english ivy. Fun times people!


So a few weeks later we did another cut back and sweep with weed killer. This time however, I was in a long sleeve shirt, gloves on, and rubber bands around my wrists to avoid "slippage". Yes, the rash was that bad. The protection worked and no more rash. We did this about 3 or 4 times and the ivy was gone.


Then we roto-tilled the yard. Well, David started then we got a bit of help to finish. That brings us to the first "before" photos that I can find.


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I should mention here that our AMAZING lemon tree only DOUBLED in size once we got rid of the ivy. We can't give lemons away fast enough, and they are Meyer (sp?) lemons!!


Then we had a border put in.
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I love it!


And then we had the mulch delivered!
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Yes, it was too much mulch (ha ha). A ton for $35!!!! We are going to me mulching ALL over the yard now! :)


The grass was delivered the next day!
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We were so excited at this point! We knew it would be soon...


Then the fun stuff started!
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The mulch went in!


The sod was placed...
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AND... Our new backyard!
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Before the sod went down, we decided to put down sprinklers. It's such a small area that it only needed 4 sprinkler heads. But now we need to run then a lot and stay off the lawn for about 1 month. Not even mow it. We had some sod left over, so it went right outside the gate towards the front yard where the grass had just been beat down after so many years of walking there.


We are so excited about the yard. The dogs have enjoyed looking at it from inside the house. NO dogs on the new yard! :) I can't wait for our first dinner out on the patio. Just in time for warm weather and fun times outside with junior.

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