the backyard project. Part 1.

The only people I can think of who actually read this probably don't read this anymore, so I decided I won't waste time on a series of wedding posts. :) You important people were there. Mission accomplished, so to speak.

So what is taking up most of our lives right now? Probably just the good old day-to-day stuff. Laundry, dishes, working, paying bills, working on the house, that sort of thing. This past weekend, as many in the States are wont to do, we worked on our backyard. We decided to extend our patio for the purpose of making room for a delightful furniture/dining set out there. Here's what our back patio looked like before:

As you can see, We used to have an awning. That died in the first winter we were in the house, due to our naive new-homeowner lack of knowledge about how awnings work (or do not, in the case of several feet of snow...). That bird bath you see is now located closer to the back fenced in part of the yard (out of scope). Here is what the patio looks like now: 

Sort of a diagonal/side view

 Head on view/looking at the house

We prepped it by removing all of the large white flagstones peppering the mulch bed, and re-planting the grassy-looking annuals that are there. I don't know what they are, I honestly can't remember if they bloomed or not last year, ha! Dad and Jonathan both worked incredibly hard to lay down the gravel, sand, and pavers to square it off. I returned home from work to find them putting together the table and chairs. In the photo above, on the right hand side I asked them (fine, I whined a little bit) to put three more down to square it off onto the cement. It now has a really pretty little stair-stepped look. As you can see, Puck, our new border collie, thoroughly enjoys it. 

The next step was to pretty it up a little bit. Jonathan brought home 6 bags of brown mulch on Saturday, and while he was at work Sunday I spent the morning spreading it all out and trying to clean up the area a bit. 

 Here, Puck finds a nice shady spot next to the fence amongst the hostas. 

Here, Puck, AKA Viet-Dog, decides to cool off *inside* of our shrub (I can't tell what kind, I think it may be a Faulkner, or a boxwood, or maybe a type of holly? Any gardeners wanna help me out here?). I don't blame him; it was close to 90°... 

Monday, I got really ambitious and took a trip to Home Depot. I purchased 2 coleus plants and stuck them in a planter that's been sitting out in front of our garage since we moved in. I took an extra unused paver and placed it in a mulched corner next to the table and chairs. I also decided to see how badly I can fail at gardening this year. I decided on a whim to purchase a 3 year old blueberry tree, an Early Girl tomato plant, and a Mr. Stripey heirloom tomato. I grabbed a couple cages for the tomatoes and a little bit of organic garden soil to mix in with the native soil in the backyard, and BOOM. Mini-garden. 

Bill came over to help me do some hedge trimming and have a glass of iced tea. This is what the patio furniture looks like with the umbrella attached! The bluish row you see at the foot of the patio is a bit of patching Jonathan put down in order to make a graduated slope from patio to yard. 

The planter with coleus in it! 

The blueberry (footnote: Papaw says I need to plant another one so they can cross-pollinate; as that will create tastier fruit. Thank you for the advice, Papaw!!)

I think this one is the Mr. Stripey heirloom...

Both my tomato plants. 

All in all, it's coming together. I think we will continue to add smaller touches as the summer continues, but for now we are fairly pleased with the first phase! 

Lessons learned: 1. Jonathan told me we had a lot of tree roots to dig through in order to plant anything back here... so I did. Thankfully we have a hatchet and I worked out some of my anger issues... 2. Buy more mulch than you think you need... 

I leave you with my song du jour.