Yesterday evening, we got a knock on the door around 7PM. It ended up being Carol Jean, a neighbor of ours from two doors down. She was just stopping by, and chatted with us a bit about our backyard (she had heard we were going to get some work done, and was just curious).
The front yard really is a lovely thing to see. I’d argue it’s the nicest looking plot of lawn on the block, but then… I’m a little biased in this regard. I am still awed when I think about how this all used to look, before Liz and Julie tackled it.
A lovely photo of Liz, with our house in the background. Bit by bit, we’re making things better. I cannot wait until this backyard area is all cleaned up. I’m truly looking forward to inviting folks over to come and hang out. Can’t wait.
The good news: we’re getting some landscapers to come in, and do all the work for us. We priced out a few options, and the one we’re going with is having an outside company come in, clear the yard, and level it for us. After they’re done, we’re going to get a delivery of sod and lay that down ourselves.
Saturday was another big cleaning day for us. Originally, the plan was to tackle the whole first floor last weekend, but we ended up only getting though the kitchen. Today: the remainder of the first floor. Mostly.
After dinner with Liz’s folks on Sunday evening, we walked home in the rain to discover the yard was awash again with earthworms. See those long lines in the soil? Earthworms, every one of ’em.
We’ve had this day on the books for a while: on Saturday, Liz and I spent all day working on cleaning the first floor. More specifically: we meant to clean the entire first floor, but ended up spending all our time in our kitchen.
Here’s thing with some of the flowers that have come up: the tulips in particular are really big! On just a casual glance, the yard has a lot of color. But once you start staring at the tulips, Liz pointed out to me just how large/tall they actually are. And they’re huge!
We made some great progress in this room about two weeks ago, when we cleared out the closet and north wall. We’ll have a similar task when we jump one room over, and try to tackle the same (but inverse) in the guest bedroom.
I like this photo because it captures a lot of what we do, when we arrive home. Which is namely: pausing at the sidewalk, and looking at all the flowers that have started to bloom.
Liz spent a lot of the afternoon, working on cleaning up the front yard. While she did a little bit of work on Friday, today was the super-intense cleanup day.
The sink, as it stands now, was moved to the dining room where it is currently fed via two garden hoses, coming up from the basement through the fireplace.
Liz had a day off on Friday, and I arrived home to find her working in the yard. On Julie’s advice, the yard was left untouched (to provide cover/warmth until the cold finally passed). Now that it’s warmer out, Liz wanted to give the front yard a little more attention.
When we encountered some lathe that was a little tricky to remove, we instantly went for the sawzall. Interesting to see how comfortable we are becoming with this tool, versus how timid we were when we first got it.
Worked on the house a bit tonight, after work. I was upstairs, getting insulation around some pipes while Liz was adding insulation to the walls in the first floor bathroom (and along the basement stairs).