Beautifying the Backyard

Yesterday, while I was noodling on my computer, Liz and Julie were out at a nursery shopping for plants.

Similar to what they did for our front yard, Liz came home with an assortment of things for us to plant along our new fence.

This guy is a fun one. A small dwarf tree, I believe, though I can’t recall the name. I kept calling it “Tippy,” after the wind had knocked it over multiple times.

Making plans with garden hose. Eventually, this is where we think the AC condensor units will go.

Liz and Julie, providing more shape to the yard.

Taking a moment to admire the spaghetti squash that seems to be thriving in the garden box.

If you haven’t followed along for the garden box project, let me invite you to take a peek at what turned into a twelve-part series spanning two months.

Little tendrils. I’m a bit excited and afraid at the prospect of spaghetti squash (I heard they get really large/heavy).

Assessing the layout.

The shape of things to come.

Julie and Bob had to leave by noon, but with the garden hose as our map… Liz and I set about carving out the curve into the ground.

It was more work than we could complete in a day, so we figured marking the ground would allow us to remove the hose and come back another day.

There were two bump-outs that we tackled, digging up the sod.

I know it will look nice once we’re done, but a part of me felt weird removing the very thing we spent so much time installing.

It was tough work, as we only needed to dig about 1.5″ below the surface – but I ended up digging out deeper, digging out more. One of us would dig, while the other would knock off the excess soil before throwing the sod away.

A lot of bags. Or the start of a mini-fort.

Running out of bags…

After removing the sod, we went back to loosen up the ground a bit more (the soil got pretty compacted by the guys who did the fence install).

Liz, planting.

About 1/3 of the way done. We’ve got a large area in back that is going to be tricky, as we want to set up some chairs and a fire pit, and other things. So we may end up needing to dig a lot deeper there (but something for a future weekend).

Today was really nice – the weather was phenomenal, and perfect for being outside. The day shot by really quickly, and though we worked a great deal for what seemed like small gains… the work we did looks really lovely.

We are able to have such an immediate impact on the look of the backyard, I can see why yard work like this can be so addicting. I wish I had another day or two, so that we could finish things off and really make things look even nicer.

Related:
Single Day Front Yard Transformation: Before and After Photos