Sore, but my yard is going to look great!

Last week, Mike and I had the brilliant idea to do some yard work this past Saturday.  It's Monday now and I'm still sore.  I don't know how professional landscapers do it day after day.  I'm sure they must get used to it, but still.

Last year, we put in our landscaping - concrete patio, stone half wall, stone walkway up to the house etc.  As a result of the work going on in the back, our nice lush lawn was trampled by a smaller earth mover and then a larger earth mover used to pull the smaller one out of the mud and so on.  After the landscapers left, there were pockets of the lawn that had been dug up, which left large dirt areas ready for weeds to invade and invade they did.  In addition, we have drainage issues, so there were areas where the top soil was greatly thinned to the point where you could see the roots of the grass.  Lastly, since our yard backs onto a farmer's field, weeds and vines congregated at the fence and so they were starting to creep into our yard.

This year, Mike and I declared full on war against the weeds, largely because they are ugly and because of Gimli's allergy, which I'm happy to say has been dormant so far, but we have 5 months to go.

Saturday morning, we started early.

• Pick up poop.
• Trim any dead branches from our plants/shrubs.
• Pull up weeds - we had a large assortment of dandelions around the yard and prickly type weeds at the back where the vines had deposited their spores.  The de-weeding took most of the day, but a good majority of them have been removed.  This is going to be a constant task, I know it.
• Remove the vines from the back fence.  It's not very apparent in the picture, but these vines were intertwined both in the fence and with each other.  I'd cut a strand and pull and I felt like I was pulling spaghetti from a large pot, only to have it stop because it was snagged on a branch.  About half of the mess landed on our side and the other on the farmer's side.

Before we started working

After

• Remove/dig up the strange plant that looks like grass, but is actually a malevolent creeping green weed that will overtake your yard if you aren't careful.

• Mow the lawn.
• Put down top soil and grass seed and hope the grass takes in the next little while because I will be very upset if weeds start moving into my nice top soiled areas.

Notice the amount of seed/soil patching we had to do, every black spot is new grass.  The left side of the yard is just as bad.

• Bring out our patio chair and table. At least that portion of the patio is usable. The gazebo and the rest of the chairs will come out later on in May.

Thankfully, Mike's dad came to help us out with the digging of the weeds at the back of the fence because there's no way a weakling like me could have done it.

Next on the agenda is to put out our flowers in various pots in the front and back yards.  It's been quite cold overnight and so we're waiting a bit longer before we purchase flowers and pots and make our house look like normal people live here.

Bonus shot of Gimli, because, well, who wouldn't want to see such a handsome corgi?