Auction House Yard Progress

Lately I have spending ALL my time working in the yard, hence the lack of blog updating. By the time I sit down at my computer at night I’m usually aching and exhausted. I wanted to share some Before and Progress (definitely not after) pictures with you all to show how far this sad yard has come.

The day of the auction this is what the yard looked like!

After taking possession of the house, this horrific evergreen shrub and the overgrown driveway were the first things we tackled:

Getting the evergreen shrub out involved an ax, lopers, a skid steer, and a lot of anger.

 Then my role came which was removing TONS of rock and prepping it for grass seed. Of course I had help (as I do in every project).

Today our little grass seedlings are just starting to come in and I will be SO happy to have reclaimed this portion of the yard!

Our next project was trimming this badly overgrown crab apple tree.

After a day of attacking it with lopers and trimmers we got it into this condition:

But, the edging aournd it’s base was very overgrown and there was absolutely no definition between the inside and the outside, other than a brick running through the grass.

 So last week I attacked that with a shovel and edger and removed about 2 inches of grass off of the entire interior area. I will be adding wood chips in soon!

The tree is looking better, but now we’ve got this mess on the driveway.

The next project I recently finished was attacking the small corner jungle portion of the backyard. It was about 20’x20′ of overgrown mess.

I pulled a ton of trees, cut others down, and eliminated everything but this one dead tree. Now that we can finally access the dead tree that’s coming down for firewood shortly. Then I’m hoping we can get some decent grass growing back here, along with planting a decent sized tree for privacy (even though a good friend just bought that green house right behind us!

On the other side of the backyard we had VERY overgrown bushes, along with TONS of wild rhubarb or burdock. I dug SO many of these awful woody long woody roots out of the ground. I also cut back the shrubs almost 8 ft!

We took TONS of loads of brush to the dump by the time we were done with all the trimming.

Now I’ve got this big open area next to the shed where I will be planting a garden!

Along with trimming these bushes in the backyard, I also cut back about 8 feet in the front yard! They got to know us very well at the dump. Now I’ve got grass planted and I’m trying to reclaim those 8 feet as yard!

We also have a huge apple tree in our backyard that was SO overgrown and hanging down the the ground in many places.

It’s been a long process but I’ve got the apple tree all trimmed up and now the boys can play in it and we can actually mow underneath it!

Next is on to the big stunner, the front planting bed. When we bought the house this is what the front looked like:

In a burst of house frustration one Saturday I took the sawzall to the peeling wood railing and had it gone in about 20 minutes. Even after removing all the overgrown weeds and the railing it was still a sad sight.

First I removed the old brick edging and laid out a possible edging line with an extension cord.

 Then this week I tackled the new stone edging. I removed the grass under the bricks, and now I’m trying to kill and remove the grass inside the edging.

 I’m hoping to fill this with compost and wood chips and have it be a flower garden.

After all the work here is the new view from the front. I’m thinking I’ll add one more layer of brick to the edging, just to give it a little more presence from the street level.

On trash day this week I’m pretty sure the garbage man was hating me. Actually I’m absolutely sure because while I stood on the porch and watched he put his hands on his hips and shook his pointer finger at me.

Even though we’ve done a TON of work we still have a LONG ways to go. We started with aerating the lawn this week and planting lots of grass seed. Next up comes some plants and shrubs!

Our little auction house has come a LONG ways!