GREEN!!

I have gotten fairly far behind in my postings lately. A large part of that is because I was still waiting on pictures from my half marathon so that I could post about that, but I still haven't gotten copies from Annie and I am giving up on waiting for them to post. So hopefully in the next couple of days I will bombard you with posts and just maybe I will get the pictures for the half marathon as well.

As I am sure you all remember our house is constantly a work in progress. That is what you get when you buy remodel houses. It just depends on what stage of the remodel you are at. We finished the kitchen a couple of months ago, and decided that this summer was going to be about the yard. When we bought this house almost two years ago the market in Pocatello had not crashed yet. We had a low budget and literally this house was the only suitable option in our price range. I knew that the inside was small and that it would need a lot of work to make it comfortable, but what really made me okay with buying this house was the yard.

Our backyard here is huge! We get a little extra space back there because of the canal easment. While the backyard was FAR from beautiful when we bought it I could see the potential. The house had been vacant for a year and the lawn had not been watered. In fact when we first looked at it the weeds in the backyard were waist high. But we wondered with a little tender love and care what we could make of it. The front lawn has been a simple fix. We began watering it and trimming it up. Spray it for the weeds and it looks great. The backyard has been a different story.

The first spring we lived here, much to our surprise we learned that there was still some grass in the backyard. That gave us hope that we wouldn't need to replant. We tried diligently last year to make it work, but to no avail. The weeds far too easily took over what little grass we had. So, we decided this year it was time to do something about it.

In May I took Roundup to the entire backyard. No small task I might add, and killed everything. All of the weeds and what little grass we had. Then came the great debate. Do we plant or sod. Seeding is so much cheaper, but with our lack of sprinkle system and not being able to put one in without some major overhaul to our back porch, we ended up deciding that sod was the way to go. It took us a couple of months to dig up the cash and the time, but finally on July 2nd we got it in.

I felt like a giddy little girl while we were rolling it out. Sod does so much for instant gratification. Our yard looks like a completely different place. We only had enough money to do the front half of the yard, but the back half is only going to be half grass (the other half a fire pit and sandbox) so really we did most of the grass we will need. Since then it has been a constant vigilance to water the beloved sod. Without a system it keeps our water running fairly constantly but it is so worth it. I can't wait until I let the kids go play on the toys on it. To fill up the swimming pool and not have to worry about all of the mud it will make. Yeah for GREEN!

Our process in pictures, oh and words:

The other part of this process was finishing up the kitchen project. Ever since we moved in my back porch has been a cabinet shop. Landon and Eric have kept it busy doing projects for my house and side jobs for Eric. With the finish of the kitchen I was promised that the cabinet shop would be removed to the shop. So, I made that part of the backyard project. We made a bonfire of all of the old kitchen cabinets and all of the scrap wood that had taken up shop on my back porch and set it ablaze. Surprisingly enough the above picture is after hours of work cleaning it out. Normally you could only walk through a path on the porch to the back yard.

Landon the fireman!

The kids loved the fire.

Landon thought the ash would be good for the soil so we spread it all over before rotatilling and leveling the ground for the sod.

The kids were so patient with us as Landon and I spent days working on the backyard well after their bedtimes and into the dark. But they were troopers!

The finished product!!!