Before

We had quite an eventful week with our yard last week.  First of all, we were noticing how much our 2 pin oak trees have grown since moving here 7 years ago. They were getting so big that they were starting to take over the yard.  Last summer, we didn't get much sun at all. And the millions of leaves that came from these 75 foot trees was crazy.  Our neighbors had both asked us if we were ever going to take them out. We started thinking that we could do a lot more with our yard without these dominating lovelies around.  The first guy that came told me that even though these trees were 40 years old, they were still babies. What!?! They just keep growing for at least 100 years.  I believed him after seeing how much they grew in 7.  These are not yard trees! Now we felt like we had no choice. After shopping around for an estimate we decided it was time to say goodbye. 






It took 5 guys 4 solid hours of hard work to bring down each tree.  It is quite fascinating to watch.  There was one guy up in the tree and other guys below lowering one branch at a time and sawing it into pieces and taking it out front to the chipper. When only the trunk was left, they guy just started at the top and cut one log at a time off until he got to the bottom. Dallin was home sick the first day and sat and watched out the window nearly the whole time.  We hate to think about how we could have used the money on other things, but we are both glad it is just done, it needed to happen. We used all the bark chips from the second tree to lay all around the back of the yard around the playhouse because it gets really muddy back there. We also kept a small supply of wood for camping. We still have one 75 foot tall evergreen in the corner and 2 smaller breed of oaks on one side and lots of mature landscape to enjoy from the neighbors.


Here is what is left from my cute gardens from last year(below). Yikes.  We threw the boxes away because we learned that you should not make them with pressure treated wood. The dirt was still there under the leaves.  The week before, we went and bought everything we need to make new boxes and expand for this year.  I was so excited to get started.   Saturday was a gorgeous day and I had dubbed it "garden day".  Peter went to run a half marathon in the morning so I decided to get started.  I raked all these leaves first.  Then I laid a huge tarp on the lawn and shoveled all the dirt onto it. Then I had to pull huge heavy bags of new material to add to the dirt that we already had.  I added more compost, vermiculite, and peat moss in large quantities and had to mix it all with shovel and rake like a big cake mix.  Oh man, my body hurts just thinking about it. After 2 hours, my prego body was overdone.  I was determined to get the project done though so when Peter got home, also exhausted, we mowed down the blackberries that sprung up, evened out the ground a little and laid some more weed cloth down.  It cleaned up really nicely.  Peter built the new boxes which are one 4x4 and 2 4x8, quite a bit more than last year.  Once we had them in the right spots, we filled them with our new "Mel's Mix" soil that I had made. Its a beautiful thing.  We got the grids on top mostly done, but Peter decided he had better finish bringing the bark chips back from the driveway. That was about 100 wheel barrels full.  The finished boxes look great and all we need to do now is lay down some pea gravel around them and plant!

Our yard is really starting to come together now.  I need to take the after pictures still so stay tuned.   I loved working out there though, it was so rewarding to see it all come together.  We still have a mile long list of things we want to do with it, but we sure do love our yard. The kids are out there all the time.  
Here are a few things we hope to do this summer. We want it to be nice, but mostly a kid haven: finish up playhouse(I am actually excited about that!)
plant the garden
dec out the inside of playhouse
put down grass seed on baldy lawn
hang cool patio lights on covered patio
get new gravel for side of house and garden area
put swings upmake climbing wall on side of playhouse
install a zip line
hammock between our "little" oaks that we still have
fire pit
clear out and level north side of housegeneral clean up and grooming
spruce up front yard(it is embarrassingly overgrown at the moment)

I hope we will have lots of Saturdays to work out there this year. I have more hope for our yard than I have had in a long time now that the overbearing trees are gone. I love having our own little piece of earth to make our own.