Yard Progress

We’ve made a tiny bit of progress in the great yard clean up of 2016. We’re really trying to get our property in decent shape this year since it’s been pretty neglected for the three years we’ve been in the house. Of course right now it still looks pretty crappy but it’s a work in progress! We’re starting on the side of our yard that sits between our house and our neighbor’s house. We figured this side is the most important right now because our neighbor actually has to look at it (we don’t have a neighbor on the other side of our house) and her house is on the market so I’m sure it will help her if our yard doesn’t look like total crap.

Here’s our overall plan for this side of the yard:

-Remove weeds
-Remove ivy
-Clean up leaves
-Remove monkey grass
-Remove overgrown azaleas
-Trim other giant bushes
-Trim fence posts
-Clean fence
-Stain fence
-Landscape around outside of fence (mostly mosquito plants)
-Plant plum trees
-Install edging from fence to front of property
-Mulch from fence to front of property
-New walkway (this will happen later down the road)

Our time has been pretty limited lately since our past several weekends have included at least one day away from the house and the weather hasn’t always wanted to cooperate. We’re also limited by how much we can put in our yard waste container each week. Here’s the best I have for before pictures…this is after we raked up a ton of leaves and I removed some new ivy growth.

I hate monkey grass with the fire of a thousand suns so we decided to rip it all out and put in plum trees. Kyle hacked everything up with a pick ax and then I picked up all of the chopped up plants and tossed them in our yard waste bin.

Once most of the monkey grass was up, we went ahead and planted our plum trees. There are two in this picture (taken a couple of weeks ago) but they’re almost impossible to see.

On Saturday, we removed the rest of the monkey grass and I worked on raking out all of the loose grass remnants and leaves and tried to level out the area a little bit. I apparently forgot to take a picture but it looks a lot worse right now than it did when we started working. I’m planning on cleaning up the rest of the leaves and dirt this weekend and hopefully we’ll also be able to install the edging and just maybe start mulching.

We have zero plans and a forecast full of sunshine so fingers crossed for a productive weekend!