Moving Dirt

We hired a contractor to come in and remove all the rocks, weeds, and level the dirt for us.  He worked Thursday through Saturday, and I hardly recognize our lot now.  It's amazing how much different it looks to us.  Even after the first day, I was so overwhelmed by all the changes that it took me a while to realize he leveled all the dirt piles!  The money for the contractor was some of the best money we have spent. 

We are going to be laying out our sprinkler system tomorrow and hopefully will start pulling pipe on Thursday.  I'm afraid to voice this for fear of the weather changing, but we may actually get some grass in before winter hits!  There is an end in sight...

Plants!

On Monday, we purchased 23 plants for our flower bed and then 3 garden mums as an impulse buy for some additional color.  We weren't sure how many plants we would need and it was hard because they are small now, but will be getting a lot bigger.  We think the area to the left in the picture below will mainly be a flower garden, so our mums get to hang out there for now.  Off to the right we will plant some more flowers and maybe some taller bushes for some "height integration".  Can you tell with my sophisticated terminology that we visited a couple nurseries?

We got 10 of the plants in the ground last night and the remaining 13 tonight.  Fall is definitely on its way because it is getting darker earlier and we are running short on time!  We also installed a drip system that waters each plant individually.  Right now it is just hooked up to the outdoor faucet, but when we get our sprinkler system installed, we will have it run on a timer. 

Travis got more work done on his column and it looks great from the road.  He just has a couple more sides to do above the deck, but we need to get the railing installed on that side first.  We are hoping to get the railing up tomorrow.

We got a variety of plants that are a range of heights.  I am definitely a person who likes to see results right away, so I'm very anxious to see these plants in a more mature state.  I guess we'll just let the waiting game begin...

Flower beds

Last week, I had basically finished with the rock walls and Travis finished the rock on one of the columns on the deck.  Trav also picked up 5 truck loads of top soil and dumped them in our flower bed so that I would have plenty to do this weekend.  We worked hard and moved a lot of dirt to get the slope that we wanted in the flower bed.  On Friday, we also had 10 yards of bark and 3 yards of red lava rock delivered.  After laying down some weed control fabric, we moved the bark to the flower bed.  Even though it took a ton of wheelbarrow loads, I actually enjoyed moving the bark because it was a lot lighter and easier to move than dirt and it also makes that part of the yard look so much more finished!  The color of the bark makes the colors in the rock stand out more, so I can only imagine how nice it will look when we have plants in there, which we are hoping to pick up on Monday!

 You can see a little bit of the red lava rock off to the right hand side in the following picture.  After we get the path leveled the way we want, we will put that rock on the path, which I think will make all the colors "pop" even more:)