The Lovely Yard

Oh the yard...

<---(Front Before) So the yard will be the bane of our existence for a while. My mom came to town while my dad was working at the RNC for the AP. Her and the puppy, helped us do some major damage to our yard. The front yard is COMPLETELY leveled. Some things have returned so we will have to dig them back up but we plan to seed in the spring. (Front After--->)

The backyard still needs some major work - there's so many raised beds and wooden things they built I just don't know what we are going to do with it all. I think once we remove some of the raised beds, sweep the driveway and clean out the garage we might actually be able to park our car all the way back there. Just imagine a garage, the door doesn't go down, it might be too small for a car and it has the aroma of cat urine, but its a garage. :) HA! Actually, according to crazy lady it is the only garage that was still standing after the 1981 tornado went through our neighborhood and that's why the door doesn't work anymore because something got twisted by the wind. Whatever seems like there's tornado every 50 yrs. We read about them on the information boards in the park a few blocks from our house -- it has a timeline. (<---Back yard after my mom got to it.)

As for the yard we found a lot of interesting things. They used panyhose to tie back a LOT of things. So gross. The had broken birdbaths, pedestals, pots, plates, etc. EVERYWHERE. There's a place in the backyard that has soo much broken glass in it we might just have to dig the dirt out and throw it away. There's also random metal buried in the dirt. For example a 6 foot tall snow fence stake buried 5 feet deep -- that makes sense doesn't it? There's also metal wire fencing buried uber deep too. It's so deteriorated and deep though it was just breaking when i tried to pull it out so there's going to be a lot of digging in the backyard. They also built the raised beds, I mentioned earlier, and buried a tree 4 feet deep -- that's a quick way to kill a tree no wonder it looks like hell. My mom found army men and other action figures. There was also a ball some poor kid probably lost in the yard and never retrived because they probably thought the yard was haunted -- which if you told me I might actually believe because we found head stones!

Yup, you heard me right HEAD STONES (see photos). She was using them to keep the dirt in the raised beds in place. They're all imperfects I think but creepy none the less. One actually is complete another, doesn't have any writing and the more you look around the backyard the more you see pieces of polished granite etc. We are going to haul at least one of them to the front yard for halloween decoration and we are going to mound up the dirt like a body is buried there, I hope it creeps some little kids out it, like it creeps me out! But how do you get rid of them when halloween is over!? How do you get rid of any of it? We have so much dirt, rocks, paving stones, bricks - I don't know what we will do with any of it.

This lovely specimen is Japanese Knot Weed. It may be still sold at some garden centers, if you ever see it. Run from it screaming. It's an evil vile thing that some crazy people (previous owners) mistake as some wonderful hearty bamboo, that you could sell because its so grand. Bamboo does not grow in our climate. This crap is a weed. It's extremely invasive just a small portion of a root can grow into a huge plant. We have a huge clump of it in our back yard and our side yard and after looking it up on wikipedia after my mother's warning that it is an invasive exotic weed, I found out how difficult it is to get rid of. We cut it back and painted the stems with an herbicide (Ortho Weed-be-gone) and it still came back and that concetrate stuff usually kills anyhting. One website suggested digging what you could out, then covering the ground with a tarp to deprive it of sunlight, cutting it back when it grewback and painting it with weed-be-gone to get rid of it. Can you believe it? And I thought the raspberry bushes in our front yard were going to be a pain to get rid of.

In three days we managed to change the look of the property completely! All I have to say is THANK YOU MOMMY!!! And... When can you come back? HA! We haven't been as motivated since she left, she was so motivating seeing her tear up the yard. I must admit we almost miss some of the brush only because the back yard was more private and you couldn't see right into our front windows before. But I would never wish it back! I'd definetely say its one of the more impressive things we have done to the yard thus far - but then Mike and Jake will be replacing 1/2 of the roof this weekend -- which I think might trump the yard. Check out the before pics and semi-after pics in the slide shows on the right hand side. If I ever get around to taking more detailed shots of the house I will some up of the terrible wall paper, etc.

Stay tuned, there's always more to come! :)