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!