When we first bought our house, we knew we needed to have the backyard regraded. The water was currently flowing down our backyard toward our house. When it would rain we would see puddles right next to the house...which isn't good-especially when your home is built on a crawl space!
This was obviously a job that John and I could no undertake on our own, and over the winter months we talked to several different people about getting this done. Every single one of them said they would not do this job until May or June. Doing it when it was winter or early spring would make a giant mud mess and wouldn't be worth doing since we would not be able to grow grass and the mud would just wash down toward the house. This made sense.
While we were waiting on May to come, John and I dug up 4 azaleas that were planted right next to the house by the kitchen windows. We have nothing against azaleas (they're pretty!), but we didn't like where they were. We really didn't want any landscape in our backyard-just grass! Also these hadn't been kept up and were really "woody" with not much green. After we began to dig we decided that based on their HUGE extensive root system (yes, for just a bush), these 4 bushes must have been planted when they built the house in 1987. These things were a pain, and we both felt it in our backs for a few days! But the most important thing is that we got them out!
There were also three bushes planted really close together outside the sunroom windows. I wanted these gone too. After our struggle with the previous bushes, we decided to chop these off at ground level and see what happens. We did this in April and they are just now (November) starting to come back a little bit...we will see what winter does to them, and hopefully we won't even have to deal with them in the Spring!
Here are the bushes outside the playroom before we chopped them down!
It's really hard to take a picture to show the slope of a yard, but these pictures with the kids in them show somewhat what the slope used to be like before the grade work. I'm standing close to the house taking the pictures and you can tell the kids are "up the hill" from me!
When we were having our grade work done, I REALLY wanted them to take out a dogwood tree in our backyard. Everyone couldn't believe I wanted a dogwood taken out, but a tree is only great if it is where you want it. This tree was in our way! We have We have 6 other trees in our backyard that provide shade and they're all in the same area. This tree was off by itself and in the middle of where the kids and I play! John agreed and so we had the dogwood dug up by the roots with the bobcat! Here it is after being dug up! (Can you tell Nora Kate doesn't know what to think about the tree in the picture?!)
Above is where the tree used to be.
See that bush to the right-while the Bobcat was working on the rest of the backyard, John dug and chopped that thing down too. We didn't really like where it was and it was TOO BIG!
We all had to have a little fun on the Bobcat!
So when we were having the grade work done not only did we request that the slope lessened and water drainage be fixed, we also requested a specific size level spot be made into the hill. We had plans to put a playset here for the kids!
After the gradework was complete, our backyard was a muddy mess. It was really dry for a couple of weeks, so the dirt got hard and packed down. Dawson had fun riding his bike on it. Dirt bike! But we were SO ready to play in our backyard again!
Everyone warned us that June was NOT the time to seed and straw our yard, but I figured if we could get a little grass it would be better than nothing. The kids were getting so muddy and dirty every time we were going outside.
John and I put down seed and straw in the yard and we babied this seed!
We watered it 3 (sometimes 4) times a day! This was definitely a time commitment, but it was so worth it! I was proud that we got grass to grow really well after all the "experts" warned us against trying.
In the picture above you can tell the grass was starting to grow!
Our neighbors have perfect grass, so I'm sure they were relieved when our muddy dirt bike trail of a backyard was starting to turn green.
The picture above also shows Carter's excitement over the very beginning of our playset being built!!
The guys were still building the playset, but Dawson just HAD to try out the slide!
You can see a few pieces still needing to be stained here. For the stain we picked "chocolate" in the Home Depot Stain collection, and John's parents had someone a friend had recommended design this playset after him told them what we wanted.
And, ta da! Really the most important part of our backyard (to the kids at least), our finished playset! We have already spent countless hours on this. It was completed 4th of July weekend.
Our grass did great over the summer, but we knew when September came we would need to aerate and put down more seed to get it to come in thicker and to hit some of the patches that were mostly dirt (although they were few).
The ground was surprisingly hard this time around. We weighed the aerator down with cinder blocks, and everything we could think of (even my tiny little weights that I think only added a total of 26 pounds -see the orange and green weights?!), but it still wasn't doing great!
Obviously, this is not the recommended method for aerating your lawn, but it worked and no one got hurt! My dad drove the riding lawn mower pulling the aerator and John balanced on the cinder blocks on top of the aerator.
They went back and forth. Then we threw down seed and straw. It worked because now our grass is thicker and not patchy!
We are glad to have the backyard regarded to help with the water flow away from the house and to make a larger level spot. The addition of the playset and removal of the tree at bushes have given us a lot of great area to be outside and enjoy the summer and fall!
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