October 2013 saw the beginning of the great change of our yard. Ammon and I decided on a plan, and we made it happen!! We really wanted a big patch of grass, and in theory it shouldn't have been all that hard.
HERE is before:
Unfortunately the gravel in the front yard was much deeper than we had originally thought... this made the preparations take much longer.
Additionally, there was the random array of inefficient sprinkler piping. At one point, Ammon even broke a pipe that led to our main water line... that was annoying. On the upside, we have a new faucet in the front yard. Our next-door neighbor (the retired cop with the picture-perfect manicured lawn) told us the previous owner of our house he had once called "Make-it-work Charlie" because he liked to get things done but he never did things the right way. Kind of ironic since that's exactly the opposite of Ammon's motto.
And then there was the horribly constructed brick path that had to be removed because well,
we hated it.
Oh, and we can't forget the Oleanders!!
With the combined efforts of two of our neighbors (using their chain and dually truck), we were able to remove the shrubs with little effort.
A ward member who heard that we were re-landscaping insisted we use his John Deere to do a rough leveling job. It's a good thing he did, too, because we discovered large cement blocks that were randomly placed at the front of the yard. Something that would take several strong men to lift.
Then with a little help from my dad (and Ammon's years of concrete employment), we were able to put in a lovely sidewalk to replace the brick path.
So lovely!!
Then Ammon leveled the rest of the yard to make sure water would flow away from the house.
We used some of the old brick to create a nice liner for our patch of grass.
Then a couple of bags of winter rye and conveniently placed cow manure....
VIOLA!!! SOOOOO LOVELY!!
Of course, now we are just waiting for our Bermuda summer grass to come in, but even the patch of dirt looks better than what we had before.
