1/3 Of The Way There!

Hey, heyyy blog buddies! I hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July, and hopefully a four day weekend off from work. ;) 

I have been dying to share a project with you guys, and it's actually not even complete. We are maybe 1/3 of the way there, but it's just so pretty I couldn't help it. Like many of the other outdoor projects we've taken on, my parents helped BIG TIME with this one. Let's just say, they know how to clear out an overgrown jungle like it's nobody's business. We first learned of their capabilities when we bought the house...eeek!

This time we aimed those awesome taming skills at our unkempt jungle surrounding our corner lot.  I forgot to take "before" pictures of all the whole jungle, so I here are a few of the untouched areas.  Just imagine this surrounding our whole property.

We knew our property line was somewhere in the the middle of that whole mess...we just didn't know how much of it was ours.  We could never find the middle marker, but we finally came across it on my parent's last visit.  And it turns out, most of this hilly disaster was ours.  Yay...we had more land than we thought, but holy moly, did we have our work cut out for us. :-/

Thankfully, my parents have more energy than any twenty-something I know, and they tackled that hill and all the poison ivy it could offer up!  After a few days, we could see dirt...and a couple cute rock walls, and some ivy ground cover.

And would they stop there?!  Of course not!  We decided this would be a good idea...

Holy mulch pile!!  The next morning, we spent the first half of the day spreading this over the newly cleared areas.  The difference fresh mulch makes is amazing...plus, we are hoping it'll keep some of those weeds from popping back up at full speed.

We still have a heck of a ways to go, but the difference in our yard from where we started is incredible!  And the amazing memories we have of transforming our home with our family can't be beat. :)

Anyone else take on a unruly landscape lately?!

Insta-lawn!

A couple weeks ago, the hubby and I purchased some mulch so we could continue this process that we started earlier this year {and here too}. All was fine and dandy in the world of our new mulch beds until we had some torrential, and I mean torrential, downpours in our area recently.  We were actually thrilled for the rain {can anyone say country-wide drought??}, but the bed above our rock wall was not. 

While the rain was pouring down, we were eagerly peering out all the windows of our home.  It was a rare chance for us to truly see the pitch of our property and where the water runs, because, well…there were streams of water going everywhere!!  Luckily, everything, including our newly hardscaped backyard, was sloped perfectly and things were draining away from our home and continuing downhill in our neighborhood.

All was well in the world of water drainage, except for the aforementioned bed.  That poor thing took quite the beating because our backyard looks like this. :(

See all that dirt?  Well mix it with heavy rain and it turned into a mud river that poured over the poor mulch bed.  Yup, right through it, down the rock wall, and then down the street...in all it’s dirty, brown glory.  Shockingly, our mulch did its job and pretty much stayed put, but that muddy river poured over it in several places leaving ugly streaks.

The solution to this issue?  {Obvious answer} having a backyard that is actual grass and NOT dirt!!  Unfortunately, we know achieving a grassy backyard doesn’t happen overnight.  The hubs has been working hard at getting sections to start growing, and so far, it’s working out as well as can be expected, especially when you consider the obnoxiously warm, extremely dry summer Jersey is experiencing.  {For proof, see the brighter green grass sprouting at the bottom of the pic.}  But until we have a serious barrier of grass on our slight hill, that mud will continue to flow…so we turned to an option already used in our front yard…sod!  Ahhhh, the glorious insta-lawn!  

While we aren’t bagillionaires and cannot afford to sod our entire backyard, we can certainly afford a couple strips of it!  So we {hubby} strategically placed those strips above our rock wall bed, in hopes that it would take root and provide some much needed protection during rain storms.  

It didn’t hurt that we had enough left over to sod some areas around our new patio too! :)  {These photos were not taken on the same day as the ones above...note, the overcast-ness.  Bleh.}

Since putting the strips down, we've had another torrential downpour and they totally did their job!  The sod kept the water from rushing over the rock wall bed, and it even started taking root.  It looks like this might be our second successful venture into the world of sod.

We even added a bag of river rock to our patio steps to naturally fill in gaps left from the patio construction.

Every little bit helps us move towards a finished backyard! Anyone else tackle some outdoor stuff lately?