Putting in Our Yard

Can you have PTSD from working too hard? I don't know if you can, but if it isn't PTSD, it definitely is something. John and I poured all of our time and energy into putting in our yard last summer. It was so. much. work. Words really cannot really describe all of the labor that went into this yard. 

The first thing that we did was take a couple of landscaping classes through the USU Extension. It was interesting to consider all of the different factors when we were designing what we wanted. I don't know that our yard is stunningly beautiful but we were very thoughtful about what we wanted and how to make it happen. 

Then we laid out a whole bunch of money: fencing, dirt, concrete, sprinklers. Just those 4 things cost us about $30,000. Writing that out made me kind of sick. It wasn't super easy to do all of those things either. I was astounded at how unresponsive people were to my calls. Basically everyone that we hired to do the work in the yard were the ones that called me back. It was insane. 

After those basic elements were in place the real work began. We thought that we would try to get our grass in first but decided fairy quickly that we needed to start in the back corner and work our way forward so as to have maximum access. Unfortunately we had the dirt guys leave giant piles of dirt in the way of the that access. So what that meant was a lot of shoveling. 

But actually before we could do that we had to deal with some grading issues.  Because our lot is on the foothill of the Wasatch Mountains, there is a definite slope to our yard. Not really compared to some of the other lots in our ward (some of those are crazy retaining walled). The slope of the yard is a two fold problem. First, it means that nothing is growing on a flat surface. Second, the water drainage needs to be directed (not towards our house, not towards the neighbors' fence, etc.)  In order to make our yard more flat and direct the flow of water better, we installed a ton of railroad ties along areas of the vinyl fence that we wanted to build the soil up against. The vinyl fence is not strong enough to hold the dirt, but the treated landscape timber is a lot more sturdy. We treated each of these beams extra to prevent rotting with something called Copper-Green. Fingers crossed it lives up to its promise. Then we dug out a smooth area and placed the beam. The hardest part was hammering in big metal fence posts behind each end of the beam. I remember one day when I was trying to hammer in these posts. I am trying to hold this giant piece of metal in one hand while trying to wield the sledge hammer in the other hand and actually trying to get in place in the ground far enough that I could use both hands to hammer. That was difficult.

 A few of the places we only placed them one beam high, but we went three tall in another spot. Hopefully this makeshift retaining wall does what we want to and keep the soil flat and the fence protected. It also made it so we could hopefully slope the drainage away from the low fence areas. 

The next thing we wanted to prioritize doing was putting in some fruit trees. Wow we researched and researched this, but then it is just the luck of the draw for what varieties are available. Self-pollinating, cold hardy, chill hours, disease resistant: all of those words became priorities for us as we were trying to find good varieties of fruit trees. I think we ended up going to 6 different places to find them all. But we were pretty happy with our hunt. Unfortunately now (the next Spring) we found evidence that the peach borer got at least one of our new trees. Ugh! 

We picked out a few plants for our yard and transplanted some peonies from my parents' yard, just so we would have something green while we were doing all of the other works. We also had to call the 811 service a bunch of times while trying to get things settled so we didn't accidentally hit a line. 

Another project that was just ongoing was trying pick rocks out of the yard. It is truly insane how many rocks we picked out. 

Another random project was getting the dead wood hanging over our lot taken out. Fortunately our neighbors helped with this. 

So we started at the back of the easement with our corn patch. After installing the beams, we shoveled a big pile of dirt out of the way and brought it over again. Then we brought in tons of compost and mixed it in. We dug a pipe and installed valves and drip lines. It was time to plant!

We also planted some squash and a couple of tomatoes. (The tomatoes were pretty disappointing, but the squash did well.) 

Baby corn plants!

Our vision is coming to fruition. After the garden plot, the next section was the playground area. This meant bringing in more beams as a barrier and tons of playground mulch. I think it was five truck loads. Side note: it was seriously the nicest thing that John's new company let him borrow their big pick up truck on the weekends to help with putting in the yard. It was a huge help and made a massive difference in our time effectiveness (because we weren't having to first go get a rental truck, assuming there would be one available, not to mention all of the money that it saved in the rentals). That was amazing.  

We build this sandbox for Holland's birthday. 

Even though it is still a mostly dirt lot, we had to set up our pool!

Another big step was bringing in tons of brown mulch to put around the new fruit trees. We laid down our left over moving boxes to act as a decomposable weed barrier and then brought in several inches of mulch in that area. We tried to give those trees a nice big growing area. I really hope all of our effort proves successful. 

And we finally installed the shed that we bought 6 months before. We mainly put it together on a very hot and sweaty Saturday. Wow, we were dripping. 

There were so many random steps to getting this yard together, like getting window well grates. I can't believe that the builder only gave us one for the three windows. It seemed like a pretty big hazard in our yard. 

Also, the pests! This is a picture of the dreaded squash bugs. The totally decimate a squash plant  ridiculously fast. We battled those but hunting for eggs, soaking the roots, and spraying Sevin (a pesticide.) We also became way too aware that our new lot is home to about one million giant, nasty spiders, especially black widows. John spraying pesticide unfortunately became a regular thing. We only saw one snake, but I almost stepped on it. This led me to almost dying from a heart attack, not joking. Okay, kind of joking, but it totally freaked me out. The spiders though were a legit big deal. One of my worst moments was when I came upstairs from working out in the basement and saw a large quarter sized spider on the edge of my hair and forehead. I hate spiders. Really hate spiders. 

The next part on the easement was bringing out the dome, and getting the swing set for Miriam's birthday. We also got sand for the sandbox and rigged a cover for it. If you buy real sandbox covers, it is several hundred dollars, but this was a $10 tarp that was just perfect. 
Next was doing the edging and paths in what will be the raspberries. This meant bringing in tons of rock, flagstone, sand. Digging down edging and hammering it in. Redoing the paths because our methods got better as we went along. Oh, and moving the stub up for the watering line. Man, this eastment was a beast to install, but we were really thoughtful about what to do with this weirdly long, skinny space and hopefully we are using it effectively. Check out the after and before. 

Before!

They actually play in the yard!

We also got one of our garden boxes set up and these are the literal fruits and veggies of our labor. I love home grown cucumbers, tomatoes, and corn so much. And fortunately so does my family. 

I even froze a small bag of corn from all of the remains of the first planting. Some of the cobs weren't that impressive.

What came next? A lot of edging, pathway installs, and another garden box. Also, just a lot more shoveling. I wasn't kidding when I said we had to move the giant piles of dirt from here to there and back again. Honestly the hardest part of that shoveling is not the actual shoveling but lifting the wheelbarrow. That motion of lifting the wheelbarrow handles is what gave me the best calluses. To be honest, they were pretty impressive calluses. I also wore through several pairs of work gloves (in one summer!). It was a lot of labor done by my hands. 

Every single step was so much more labor intense than you're imagining. And expensive--we spent $1500 in flagstone. Do we second guess ourselves on our design and maybe we should have picked something easier? Ab-so-lutely. 

We brought in a bunch of smaller rocks/boulders to help with the grading, flower box in the front yard. When finally, finally we were ready to start on the actual soil for the grass, we unhappily discovered we still had a lot of work ahead of us. We had to mark all of the watering lines, brought in compost, and then tried to till the dirt. It turns out that bringing that truck to unload compost, rocks, sand, and soil all summer had been compacting the new clay top soil that we had brought it. It was a beast to till. We tried just tilling it at first, but realized after a first pass through the yard, that we had to go through and pick ax our yard. We broke out big clumps of clay, and then brought in a hammer to smash the clumps. Then we had to go through and till it again and again. I know I said this before, but really, it was so much more work than you are imagining. Then, we had go through the entire lawn area again and pull out the zillion rocks that we tilled up to the surface. Then, we laid down grass seed and crossed our fingers it wasn't too late in the season to grow. That really was the whole goal of this. Plant the grass before it go too cold in the fall. And it worked! We had grass sprouting!

See the blue grass seed and the baby sprouts?

The last of the corn cobs. Some of them are pretty special. :) 

It's growing!

We harvested some basil and made flavored vinegar!

Because of our pool heater, we were able to swim until early October!

Look at the those baby fruit trees growing!

And a blurry photo of the grass!

We were so done with working in the yard by the time that winter came. We really needed that break! I think it helped me have a better attitude about winter at least at first. Wowee, when I saw we really pushed ourselves, we really did. We would work in the morning for an hour before John went to work. Then I worked as much as I could while keeping an eye on a toddler throughout the morning. Then I worked even harder during nap time because I didn't have to keep track of her then. Then we would round out the evening with working outside too. We did this schedule often. It was brutal. We weren't as consistent with our traditional workouts during this time for obvious reasons, but we pushed our bodies hard. My back hurts just thinking about it. I really hope that we will be glad for years to come about all of the time and money and labor we put into this yard. It isn't completely done yet. Lots of planting to do. The patio area needs a lot of work. And we might put up another small shed, but here's hoping the bulk of it is done!