Landscape 2

This is a very late landscaping post. I am super exhausted from all that we are busy doing, I would love to blog more but am always running behind. I started the work to sell our property in August, the first thing that we did was landscaping. This was the last, and hardest bed that I did. The 110+ degree temps didnt help.

It was educational, relatively fun except for the heat. I was very glad for a hardworking tractor! I ripped out the old rock bed here, it had a plastic thing along the side to create the bed which I didnt like, and grass had grown up through the old ground cloth.

I was able to get very close to the house, leaving just a small strip to dig out by hand. The plastic butcher board (for chickens) is against the window to protect it from any stones or debris.


This is the pile that the bucket left, I couldnt get any closer without damaging the porch so had to shovel this out by hand. Doesnt look too bad huh? Well, the grass roots, the burried ground cloth and stones were pretty wearing... it took 2 days for that portion.

I just dug it out and filled the tractor bucket and took it to dump it along the side yard. We fished out the pieces of ground cloth and the stones will keep the foliage down in the tree line for some time.

More digging... I did find that the ground cloth ran many feet into the yard. I gave up excavation at about 3 foot out from the bed edge.

The stripped bed, mostly leveled.

The corner that had to be dug out, you can see where I stated to remove the groundcloth from the actual yard and gave up, at the bottom left of this photo.

Tacking down the groundcloth with small pins, they are long and U shaped, they are not hard to put in. This is a heavy duty groundcloth, though I know now that the people who lived here before had no weeds because they used weed control chemicals, I end up pulling weeds because I wont use those. Yes, I know there is graffiti on my house. My daughter is the culprit-she found that the "guts" of old drywall will write on things.

Finished bed! We bought cyprus wood chips from a local lawn and garden place for 20$ per bucket scoop-tractor bucket. It was a good size bucket and all of our mulch cost 100$ total.

Another view, I tucked the ground cloth under to create a longer, better weed prevention. The RR ties are not complete, I need a small piece cut and the end piece shimmed up but the actual bed is complete-the hard part.

Since then I have accomplished a lot of remodeling, 1 semester in college, started homeschool, sold a lot of our belongings, finished paying off debt completely (this wasnt work so much as determination), made our clothes, oh and other things. We have had a good two months!