Hydration

The guys were here nice and early this morning to continue forth with laying the stone for the patio and installing the sprinkler system.  All the stones appear to be in place for the patio - still need to clean up the areas around them and fill the spaces between each rock but it is looking much better than before!  Our "au-natural" patio:

In the front of the house, they added rock, edging (for where the rock/mulch will meet the grass) and installed the drip-line and sprinkler system.  I believe that everywhere that has drip-line will be mulched...but we'll find out soon enough!

Here is a larger scale shot from the window in our living room.  Just off to the right of this picture is a new pine tree.  It won't get huge but should offer us some more privacy for our bedroom windows without obscuring the mountain view.  We think it is looking pretty good!

Finally a shot of the back yard...you can see some of the hose for the sprinkler system sticking up around the edges (at the ends of the sections of tilled up dirt).  The sprinkler heads will go on the ends of those hoses and will provide the much needed hydration for our grass.  We are having a drought tolerant, low water usage grass seed sprayed down, but we can go weeks without rain and no matter how drought tolerant your grass is, you need to give it a little assistance in that hot weather.  We are well aware that big, cool, emerald green yards are not natural here in Colorado, so we are trying to compromise with a lawn that will be fun to play in without requiring obscene amounts of water (once it is established).  We'll see how that plays out!

Quick Catch-up

It was pretty rainy here this morning so the workers didn't come through today...darn!  As you can tell from the pictures I am about to post, it was a gorgeous afternoon though so we took a spin around the yard to get some pictures of the previously undocumented sections.  For your viewing pleasure:

Dozer modeling the new walkway out the back gate

New walkway out to the sidewalk

Rocked Bronco area

Some of the new boulders...Ellie was practicing her lawn mowing

Another boulder

Our little rock-climber

She loves playing in the dirt!

Water Works

Hope everyone had a nice Memorial Day weekend!  We enjoyed some beautiful weather out here in Boulder and the lawn guys had 4 days off so there isn't a ton of new progress to report.  I just realized that I forgot to take pictures of the new walkway out the back gate and of the newly "rocked" Bronco parking area so I'll try and get a few shots tomorrow for a little update.  Today, most of the work was done on the sprinkler system - installing/sweating the pipes and getting the back-flow preventer hooked up.  This required drilling a hole in the side of the house and running some copper pipes in through the laundry area to the water tank.  Fun stuff.

The other area that they worked on was the patio behind the garage and at the bottom of the deck, here are some pictures of the initial work:

 

That is all we have for right now, I will work on getting some more from the back walkway and the bronco parking area...and we'll see if there is any other visual progress tomorrow!

Steady Moving

Hello again!  We got off to a bit of a creeping start on the lawn project due to a super rainy spell here in Boulder.  We were very patient of course...and we are now making steady progress.  Last week they hauled out 4 giant loads of yard "stuff".  This place was seriously neglected.  Here are some pictures from the first few days of work:

This was on day 2: Ellie went to the window and said "WOW" - hot air balloon taking off.

Then the workers showed up with their big truck...that is one load of debris.

Progress!  Lots of brush cut out and some weed barrier down. On the deck looking southeast.

On the deck looking east

On the deck looking south

Freshly laid front walk

Still looking a little rough but we have our clean slate.

Pile of mulch that they took up from all of our beds we did last year - reusing it!

So week 1 was a lot of cleaning up.  This would have taken us 2 summers to do - we are so thankful that we are able to have these guys here helping us out.  Okay so we are paying them to be here but we are thankful that they do landscaping for a living.

We are now in week 2.  Steve (the owner) had to come by and spray our tenacious weeds for a third time over the weekend.  We want to make sure they are good and dead before we go tilling up the soil and spreading our nice new grass seed all over the place.  Weeds have no place in the yard I have in my mind (fingers crossed that Ellie is a good weed puller).

It rained here yesterday so they held off on working but came in full force today.  As we were leaving the bobcat was driving off the truck into our yard.  Man we were excited, I almost called in sick so that I could watch.  Ellie too.  I thought B was going to climb into the bobcat as it was driving by.  We persevered though and I rode my bike as fast as my legs would carry me home to check out the progress and I was NOT disappointed!  I'll cut straight to the pictures:

Old patio with trees removed, rock laid in side yard for future raised garden beds!

One of the relocated trees and Dozer trying to find a spot to pee.

Stone edging and churned up yard.  It was dusky so tough for pictures.

Looking due south, relocated Ash tree on the right.

Looking east - all the lilacs are still there and they relocated a tree right off the corner of the deck (purple leaves so its dark)

Oh so that's how you move so quickly...we need one.

Relocated tree #2 - will provide more privacy with the bathroom window and Ellie's room

Looking due west towards the future garden

I am sure you can tell that we are really excited.  Nothing much has been done out front as they are driving all over the place with the bobcat. The Bronco still resides alongside the house but that area will eventually receive a makeover as well - all rock.  In case you haven't noticed, rock is really popular out here.  It requires no water, doesn't blow away in our crazy wind storms, and is durable.  We realize that we have a lot of weed monitoring and leaf blowing/raking to do to keep them looking sharp, but we aren't afraid of a little elbow grease.

So that is where we stand as of today.  We just did a little walk-about in the almost dark, admiring the progress up close.  We even got some compliments by folks walking by on the sidewalk!  As our neighbor so tactfully put it: "This place has been an eyesore for a long time now" - no beating around the bush with them. I guess we are not the only ones who are going to be excited to see this property transformed.  We will keep you posted on the progress!