A Ton o' Fun!

Yep literally a ton of flag stone has been placed in my back yard, by my trusty contractor, ME! Talk about a ton o' something! As you can see from my face I am quite happy about being finished. It has been three straight weekends of back breaking labor, but I think the result was worth all the effort. I have to give a BIG thank you to my husband Steven for moving all the rock to the back yard, hauling sand and gravel here and there and for basically putting up with all my bossing! Believe me he tried to take a shot at laying flag, but gladly gave the reins back to me. So with my creative juices on high this is how it unfolded. Enjoy!

After excavating the area we spread the gravel.

Here is the full gravel layer. Now for weed barrier and sand.

Let the creativity begin! Here I am laying the flag and trying not to mess anything up. Basically I can put together a 400 SF puzzle with out a picture! Ha Ha Ha!

If you saw my back yard before you know what a waste land it was, if not I will throw in a few pictures to show you!

Here is a shot of the back yard before Idaho power downed the two trees in the corner, killing everything in the yard! Ugh! They were awful trees though. I don't recommend Locusts at all!

Here is the waste land that it was before we started the patio. You can even see a pile of flag stone that we started collecting last year. I am taking a load of hand split wood to the front of the house.

Drum roll please....here is the after! We still have to fill in the cracks with soil and plant our Scottish moss, but the hard part of this project is behind us!

Can you believe it is the same yard? I can't! Now on to planting, staining the fence, and so on.
Look Steven already got started after getting some advice from Bailey of course!

People we have a fence!

To Steven and my great excitement we have a fence! We will still have to secure the spaces between the back fence to keep Bailey in the yard, but we are one step closer to having the yard the way we want it, not to mention it feels much more secure to have a fence on that side of the house to keep curious bodies out of our yard. Our neighbors have been pretty friendly, and frequent snooping in each others' yards is very common. Steven and I find it quite funny, but are glad we won't be getting those drop ins any longer.

Pioneer Days Hobbit Style!

Well the time finally came for Steven and I to get the wood split and garden beds tilled before Winter sets in.

What an exhausting, but satisfying job this was. As the saying goes "Wood heats you twice".
We experienced this first hand and were thankful for the cool weather over the weekend as we spent all day outside working.

Here are the highlights...

Lets Get Splitting!

The equipment was delivered just after 9:00 a.m. After the delivery persons showed us how to operate the equipment the work began.

Here is where the process began that brought us to this point of needing to rent a splitter. Idaho Power downed two large Locust trees that were interfering with the power lines.

Here is Steven in our wood filled back yard just after we moved in this April.

We started splitting the wood by hand after a handyman and Steven got some of the wood down to more manageable pieces. We attempted to do it pioneer style, but there was just too much to do by hand and that is when we decided to rent a splitter to get it finished before winter.

Let the hauling begin! We moved all the wood up front to be split.

Hobbits truly are amazing creatures!

Steven starting the splitting process.

I took a video of the splitting process. Steven did a full 6 hours by himself while I worked on the Garden. He is so amazing!

Ashton was a great help stacking, cleaning, and keeping track of the kindling pieces.

After 8 hours we finally finished! Go team Lawrence! All in all we ended up with 6 rows of wood a car width wide under our car port to burn over the winter. That doesn't include all the wood we had previously split by hand earlier in the summer. I don't think we'll be the least bit chilly this winter!


The Victory Garden!

Victory as in WWI, not the Garden show. I started with the Garden project in hopes of finishing first and then helping Steven finish splitting the wood.

I am very glad I didn't get a bigger tiller as I would not have been able to control it. Here is what I started with. What a mess!

A minor delay as we had to deal with a visitor. This was the first black widow I have ever seen.

After a few passes with the tiller, things started to take shape.

The back part of the Garden. I am so excited to start composting!

Here I am plugging along. As I like to say... "I am strong like bull"!

I started the hard scape as well. No where near done, but a good start nonetheless.

As you can see we had a full and productive weekend. We are plenty sore to remind us of our efforts!