Projects

Our Saturdays for the past month have been taken up with yard projects. Three weeks ago, we decided to redo some of our flower beds. We have this little flower bed in the front yard off the side of the garage, that has a chain that drains water right into it every time it rains. Because it's so small, and because it has the curbing around it that holds water in, the bed floods every time it rains. And when it floods, all the bark floats up and buries the little plant that is in it. We've had that plant there for a couple years, but it doesn't seem to be growing because it's always buried in bark. So, we decided to replace our bark with rock. We figured the rock would be heavy enough to not float up and bury the plant. And since we were doing that little bed in rock, we figured we'd do the other flower bed that is on that side of the yard, so it would match. And since we were replacing the bark with rock, we figured we'd rake up the bark to use elsewhere in our yard. Are you starting to see how this project just kept getting bigger and bigger? Well, you have to do weed barrier fabric under the rock, so we bought some of that to use. And since we had that on hand, I decided to place weed barrier around all our garden boxes. For some reason, that is where we have the biggest problem with weeds growing. We used to have the last garden box functioning as a sand box before we built our new one, but it was so small, that the kids could never keep the sand actually in the box, so the whole area is covered in sand (which makes it even easier for the weeds to take root). So, since I could never keep up with the weeding around the boxes, I decided to place the weed barrier fabric down and never have to worry about weeds anymore. So, I spent the day in the heat, bent over (which is really hard to do when you are 6 1/2 months pregnant) placing the fabric all around the boxes. Then we raked up all the bark out of the front beds and wheel barrowed them back to place the bark on the fabric. It was A LOT of work, but it's been three weeks now and there isn't a weed in sight around my garden.

The project then entailed getting a truck load of rocks to replace the bark in the two front beds. We got the little bed done and half of the big bed, before the day came to an end. We needed another truck load of rocks to finish the project, but the "rock quarry" (as Nate calls it) was already closed for the day, so we decided it would have to wait till the next Saturday.

The next Saturday rolled around (two Saturdays ago), and we ended up working on another huge project the whole day. Remember when our yard flooded after we got back from vacation? Well, we ran the sprinklers again and had the same problem--a huge flood in our back yard. I spent Thursday and Friday scooping water up out of the grass into a 5 gallon bucket and then dumping it elsewhere (I think I totaled about 30 5-gallon buckets full of water). On Saturday we went to work on fixing the problem. This last spring we had curbing installed along the bottom of our hill. In front of the swingset, one sprinkler had to be moved out further into the grass so the curbing wouldn't hit it. Because the flooding was around the area of that sprinkler, Scott figured it was leaking. He dug it up and discovered that the screw that was holding the saddle clamp on had come off, and when we ran the sprinklers, it was just shooting water out of the pipe under the grass.

So, Scott fixed the sprinkler. But, we couldn't figure out why the water wasn't draining away. When we bought this lot to build our house, we discovered that we had a big ugly sewer drain in the middle of our backyard. Because we are the last house on the street, and the whole street slants our direction, we had to have a drain to drain away all the water that we collected from our neighbors. Our landscaper had covered it with gravel, then landscaped on top of it (it's actually under our swingset bark). For years we've had no problem with flooding, so we couldn't figure out why the water wasn't draining out through the drain. So, we dug it up to see why. When the developers installed the drain, they placed a fabric under the grate to keep dirt and rocks out of the drain. Our landscaper had failed to place a fabric on top of the grate, so there was an inch of sludge and rocks trapped between the top of the grate and the fabric that was just beneath. So, we spent quite a while trying to pry up all the sludge out of the holes of the grate so the drain could function again. Then, to make sure the water was able to make it's way to the drain, Scott dug a trench from the lawn (which is the low spot in the yard) to the drain. Then we filled the trench (and covered the drain) with landscape fabric, then gravel (another trip to the rock quarry), then piled all the play chip bark back on top so you couldn't even see that the trench existed. It was A LOT of work. The boys loved helping with all the digging. Savannah took it upon herself to scoop out all the water that was in the sand box (the boys had a hole dug, that the water kept pooling in). She'd get all the water out of the hole, then wait 10 minutes as more water drained into the hole, then she'd start all over.






And, since we were digging a trench, we had a lot of extra dirt we needed to find a place for. So (here is where the project just grows some more) we decided to pile it behind the retaining wall behind the swing set. On the right end of the play area, the hill was pretty steep, so we added 15 new blocks and piled the dirt behind them to make the hill flatter. Of course, it required two trips to Home Depot to get the blocks, and then wheelbarrowing them back a few at a time (they weigh 70 pounds a piece), then leveling the ground they had to go on. It was A LOT of work.

The next Saturday we were living it up in Coeur d'Alene, so no projects got worked on. But, today we made it to the rock quarry for two more trucks full of rocks and got the front beds finished. We also got the last block placed back by the swingset and all the bark raked back into place.

And now we are hoping that we are done with all our big yard projects for the summer. I think we are. Of course, in a few weeks I'll get to start in on all the fall pruning of the hundreds of bushes we have in our yard and on our hill in the backyard. And then the fall leaf clean-up from all those bushes and trees. Lucky Scott, he always is in Alaska when the fall cleanup work has to be done--leaving it all to me. It should be extra fun this year doing it while almost 8 months pregnant!