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!

July and August 2022

After we got home from Canada and celebrated Miriam's birthday, the rest of the summer was a blur of yard work. I will do a different post about the monumental effort we put into our yard, but suffice it to say, my body hurts just thinking about it. 

Thankfully we can't really work in the yard 24/7 (even if we did try as much as we could to do that), so we had to fit in some other things here and there. Mainly this is just going to be a lot of photos of my girls because they are so dang cute. 
 

I can't imagine a better oldest sister than Eliza. Seriously.

My little one trying to take over our bed.

We did fit in some swim lessons over the summer. It turns out that you have to register your kids for summer swim in February, so we missed the window for the ideal situation. Holland ended up doing expensive private lessons at a woman's home. Honestly I thought she did pretty well there and seemed to make a little progress. My main issue was that the instructor really didn't seem to happy to see Holland, like ever. I couldn't handle her grumpy attitude, so when (much more affordable) lessons opened up at the beginning of August at the rec center, I signed Holland up. I didn't want to miss Holland taking lessons this summer though. She is kind of right at the point of having swimming click for her, and she needs the practice and instruction. I really hope it helped. 

My older girls took lessons at the rec center. I guess swim lessons are a lot more popular for the medium sized kids (like 7 years old) because all of Holland's age classes were sold out for the summer, but the older girls had openings for the swim team prep class. They did that class all summer (swim team was sold out except for the 6am slot, no thank you). I really do think they improve their strokes and endurance in the class. I call that experience a win. 

John had to tour Bingham Copper Mine as part of some kind of safety certification.

The girls made this cute sign for Eliza when she got back from Young Women Camp. She ran to me across the parking lot looking like the perfect little teen getting home from girls' camp with her choker, painted nails, and embroidery floss braided in her hair. She jumped up into my arms and gave me the tightest squeeze! I sure missed my girl, but she had a great time!  

I missed her so much!

We still love nursing.

We went to Bill and Sheila's community production of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. It was a lot of fun! I was surprised that Darcy seemed interested and happy to just watch it most of the play.

The actor that played Willy Wonka really made the production. He was great. The very best part though was when Holland told him (when we met him after the show) "I have read your book. It's really good." Honestly, could she be cuter??

This plumeria has kind of gone through the ringer since we brought it to Utah. First there were white flies. It was an infestation. I tried so, so many things to get rid of them, but eventually I just took it outside and doused it in pesiticide. That took care of them Unfortunately while it was outside the wind bent on of the branches really bad. We braced it with two stakes, but just looks like it has a cast on now. Later Darcy just reached up and yanked the other branch right over. It was a pretty bad bend so we decided to chop the branch to see if with could get the cutting to root and see if the cut branch would branch more. Neither of those things worked out to our disappointment. 

We eventually got the bikes down from the garage ceiling eventually. The little helmet on Darcy, kind of kills me. I love it so much. 

We have another little chocolate lover in the house.

Homemade blueberry cheesecake ice cream with graham cracker stir ins. 

Darcy got her new glasses! She is SO cute in them. I have been so surprised how well she wears them. She actually wears them most of the time. For a while, our biggest issue was that she would randomly drop them places but have no idea where she left them. It definitely created a whole new thing for our family (I call it my new 'hobby') of finding her glasses. These glasses are weirdly expensive, so we just can't keep buying her new pairs all the time. After searching the house for hours one day, I told the girls that I would give whoever found her glasses $10. Within 5 minutes, Holland had the glasses in hand. Turns out they were behind some things in her closet where Darcy likes to play.  I didn't even know that Darcy liked to play there. The other time that Darcy's glasses were really and truly lost they were under some things in the older girls' closet. I really did look in these closets while I was hunting for hours, but it was hidden more deeply than I would have thought. 
Our other issue with these glasses is that Darcy is so rough with the lens. She literally rubbed them, lens side down, on the concrete. They are scratch resistant, but there is no resisting scratches if she is going to treat them like that. The first set of lens lasted about 5 months. We are on set two and hoping they last longer because, shoot, those are expensive.

I don't know who made this, but I have a lot of pictures of it on my camera roll.

Also, pictures of Miriam's friend Nina are on my camera roll from her FaceTimes with her friend. 

One day we had a CRAZY morning: John throwing out his back by sneezing; Miriam losing her Primary talk; Darcy pouring a half gallon of milk out; trying to pop popcorn bags for the activity after church. It as so insane it was funny. 

We got some hand me down swings from John's parents. Since we don't have any real trees in our yard, we hung them up in the basement. This where we had the climbing dome before. It has been fun to see this space go through several iterations of what kind of play it is has. It started with a four square court. Then we put up the climbing dome last Christmas. Six months later we hung these swings and got out this area rug (the one that was in our front room in Phoenix). Shortly after this we got some nice toy bins to make the space more organized. Just recently we zip tied some lamps to cross pieces of wood on the support wall and added a couple of floor lamps to improve the lighting in this area. We also just got a space heater. I would like to think that we are doing our best to make the space useful and lived in despite it being unfinished for now. 

Time to retire the cool chandelier from Ellie's 3D art class.

We got the pool set up. It was so fun to have the Davises come visit and swim. 

These babies playing together kind of kills me. 

All tuckered out after a long day of playing.

Dirty face. We just take a lot of pictures of our baby.

We also went up the Davis's house. I love that we are within driving distance of them. 

This reminded me of when Eliza was about this age and loved my "beeg boots." 

"It's my beard!"

Trying out new hairstyles

Enjoying Miriam's birthday present.

Holding hands walking into swim

This sunset was incredible. I wish the picture did it justice.

Our sweetheart made us breakfast in bed.

There were 5 in the bed and the little one said... This was our back to school read a thon where we aren't allowed to get out of pjs before noon on the day before school starts. 

This set of pictures melted my heart. What a cutie!

20 years since John went to the temple for the first time.

Chocolately snuggles

Holland started second grade. She is such a cutie. I wrote about her teacher already in her birthday post, but suffice it to say that we love her teacher, who is also named Kylee. Good name. When we met Ms. Jackson on Meet the Teacher night, I just got a good feeling from her. She seemed so happy to meet Holland. She is said it was awesome that they shared a name. She just seemed delighted at the cute things that Holland said. The first thing that Holland said to her was "I am a genius at math!" There is nothing that will endear someone to me faster than when someone notices how amazing and adorable my girls are. 

Such a cute little room. Ms. Jackson made such a difference in Holland's whole outlook in life. I sure wish I knew what the secret sauce was that she was dishing out, but it was amazing. Surprisingly, she is also the only teacher that has contacted me about my child's behavior at school. Apparently Holland got sassy during math one day, but having this boundary of what is and isn't okay at school really makes all the difference. 

First day of 8th grade for Eliza!

First day of second grade and sixth grade. Fortunately Darcy is still home with Mama. After the end of the first day of school it was so sweet that everyone clustered around the island wanting to tell me every detail about their first day. 

Darcy loves nursery. It is so fun that John can be in there with her as a nursery leader. She loves Brother Charles too. One thing that nursery introduced her to is raisins. She loves raisins. So when we had raisin bread one day, all she wanted to do was pick out the raisins.

I love seeing her discover pretend play.

I love how Darcy misprounces words sometimes. When she was "woves" for "loves." "Can't meech it" for "Can't reach it." "Only eat tood" (food). She said her very first prayer at about 26 months old, and it was bring a tear to your eye cute. She also, loves, loves the home grown corn. It isn't unusual for her to eat two entire cobs of corn for dinner. 

The Primary kids put together a display of their testimonies.

For the main Sunday session of stake conference, John and the girls sat on the stand that big stake center to sing. Holland, Darcy, and I watched the broadcast from home so we didn't have to wrangle a toddler for two hours. Darcy saw them on the TV and and it kind of blew her mind! "Daddy TV. Ellie TV! Can't see Miriam!" (She was a little bit behind the choir director.)

We had dinner at the Gotberg's house. It is fun that they have a daughter that is friends with Eliza at Centennial and a daughter in Miriam's class also.

Summer goal wall! I am proud of all the things that the girls worked on this summer. They are amazing.

Darcy wants a picture on the stairs too. I love talking to her about my daily task lists. She likes to add tasks like cuddling, and "how about nursing?" She also loves saying "Actually mine." about literally anything, like the rice at dinner. "Ice, actually mine." 

This was our end of summer tea party. Caprese bites, cucumber and tomato salad, and chicken salad sandwiches on croissants. Our girls get so giddy about using the fancy china, and they spent the entire meal thinking up fancy names and titles for each of us. 

Cookies and cupcakes for dessert.

We have been trying to pick up our Sunday evening board game tradition again. This is one way we have been trying to keep Darcy happy while we play. 

Daddy daughter date to North Park

Someone's been stealing my shoes. Actually Eliza and I can share shoes now, so that's weird.

Devotional of drawing different proverbs.

One day John told Darcy he tooted. Darcy said to him, "Change Daddy's bum!"

Good thing she didn't have her glasses on when she got a face full of milk. She shouldn't squeeze when she should be nursing.

A good thought at a thought provoking fireside with Ben Schilaty. It made me want to be better at showing others I care. Also, Ellie was so cute and wanted to full on cuddle the entire meeting. 

In the Fall we started ice skating lessons. They were a hit! The girls loved them so much and don't want to stop taking lessons. They raved and raved about them so much that Holland decided to switch to doing ice skating lessons rather than dance lessons.

One day Darcy was fixated on picking tomatoes and kept trying to pick green and orange tomatoes, even though we told her to just pick, the red ones. She told John, "Pick orange one, eat it." But claimed greens ones were yucky when she tried one. Also, she saw an airplane and reached up and said, "Touch it. No, too high."

We hosted a Pearson Family dinner while Cricket was visiting. She was setting up Rachel at college for a few days and stayed with us.

Inspecting our not very complete yard.

Queen of the s'mores. She wanted to make them for everyone.

Norma's kids really like our yard. :) 

The younger crowd. Apparently that's not me anymore.

Pretending to read to Catsandra.

Holland got a pumpkin plant start from her first grade teacher, and it actually grew a pumpkin, even though we had to battle squash bugs a bit. 

Such a CUTIE!