When we first bought our house the yard was a little unkept. We knew this, it was obvious by looking at it, but we figured we could clean it up and add a little value. We did not know what we were getting ourselves into. It is like every good project, everything takes us two or three times as long as we expect it to and everything we fix shows us two more things which we did not know were broken. I do not have a very good before picture, but with our initial clean up and tree trimming we took five trailer loads to the dump. And by we I mean my father in-law, thanks so much for your help!
After this it took me months to get started because I didn't know where to begin. Everytime I would consider starting I would get overwhelmed trying to decide what task was most important. I finally started by trying to clear the path from the front yard to the back and it took me at least 10 hours and a little over a week because I did it with the kids while Matt was at work.
Next thing we did was remove the pond. Because we never take pictures of anything I don't have a before picture, but I do have a middle and after picture. I think the picture makes it look like a small pond, but it is not. Where I am standing in the picture would have been about a foot deep in the water and the deepest point was about 4 feet.
We are very ambitious and thought we could get the pond out before lunch. Just grab the liner and pull it out right? Wrong, it both Matt and I two full days and the kids helped some too. But we did take a break when Sarah hit Benson in the face with a shovel. Benson luckily suffered little damage, we did however make a few mistakes which resulted in about 10 large fish and at least 100 small mosquito eating fish dying.
This is Matt hard at work. It the back you can see our pile waiting for the dump. I like to refer to this as my magic pile because I added to it time and time again and some how it would always pack down and appear the same time. It was like Mary Poppins carpet bag, I kept adding more than I thought could fit but somehow it just kept packing in. The fence and Block wall next to the pile are about 5 feet high, and where the pile is sitting slopes down to the street. Many times Matt would say we would have to go to the dump because you could see our pile from the street, and the next morning it would have sunk down so you couldn't see it anymore, like magic.
Grandpa Ballard came again and helped Matt take out the above bird cage which preciously housed our rabbit and then they took five another five loads to the dump. This time however it was a truck and a trailer full for each load.
This picture is after we took out the bird cage and pond. I have since then taken the two trees in the middle out. We have so much more space in our yard now. There is still a ton of work to do, but when we got this much done our yard looks much different. Now you'll just have to wait two or three more years till I get the rest of the work done and can show you a finished product picture. I can't wait to post that picture!
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