At one point we had a decision to make with our home.  Do we reno the bathrooms or do we do the yard?

The yard was in ok shape, but it did have a few annoyances- first was a volkswagen sized rock in the middle of the yard, second were 5 trees in the 40-50 ft height range.

The trees definitely gave the yard privacy and a park-like feel, but at the same time they took up a lot of room, blocked a lot of sunlight, and continuously rained needles and pinecones onto the deck and grass.  Here’s a few pics showing what it looked like last fall.

We decided to bring in a landscaper to see what they would recommend.  Maybe take down a tree and see if we can level out the yard and bring the grass back to the point where I could practice putting on it.

The landscaper takes a look and recommends we take down the 2 trees to the east, and the one big tree on the NW corner.  When they took down 1 tree, it showed signs of inner rot…  and if 1 tree shows signs of rot, then there is a chance that the other trees could also be sick, yet show no outward signs of being so.  Down came the trees and 2 out of 3 show signs of rot.  They then recommed we take down the 2 trees by the deck. 

At this point, the cost of taking down all these trees were a lot more than we had anticipated when we bought the place.  The inspector said they looked ok, but it’s hard to tell without bringing in an expert.  The danger is if the trees are not balanced (leaning to one side) and if they are sick, then it just takes a wind or snowstorm to knock them down… into the house.

So we decide to take them all down.

Then came winter, and the worst snowstorm in 10 years.  Our yard looked like this.

In hindsight, it was a good call to take down the trees given the heavy snowfall. 

When spring finally came, we had to decide what to do with the yard.  Basically it was cleared out, but it was also a mess and not safe to play in. 

A winter with a hyper toddler also gave us incentive to create a safe yard to boot the kids outside and burn off some energy, and save our sanity.  Therefore we decided to dig up all the stumps and try to do something about that rock.  We hired a backhoe to come in and do the work, and our yard ended up looking like this-

The backhoe trampled over everything, and ripped out all the stumps, but could not turn over the big rock.  In the process, what little grass we had was pretty much destroyed.  We then had to bring in dirt to level out the yard and lay sod.

After the sod went in, they said to water it like crazy for about 3 weeks straight.  When they said water it like crazy, they weren’t kidding!  If you see seams opening up between the rolls, it means that the sod is shrinking from lack of water.  Luckily we had a few good days of rain, and that plus some fertilizer really helped.  We probably should have added another inch or two of dirt to help level things out, but that can be done later.

Tomorrow the grass needs to be cut, and I’ll post pictures of how the yard looks after whacking down all the trees, digging up all the rocks/stumps/concrete/paving stones, and laying down new sod, which has been in for about 3 weeks now.

A lot of work, but we figure that everyone can get enjoyment from the yard.  Next up- a “slip and slide”, hammock, and wading pool!