Backyard project
Jul. 1st, 2011 12:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynThe backyard project is complete, and I have been really lax in posting here about it, because I'm kind of tired and my back hurts a LOT from all the stuff there still is to do back there. Even when you pay someone to do most of the work, there's still a lot of ... work to do. Funny how that is. Some of the things have been changed -- I had to move some plants around due to sunlight issues (we finally had actual sunshine for one whole day, so I could see which plants were getting too much/not enough), and I have a lot of shape pruning to do, and plantings of my own.
The landscape designer really homed in on some things I said that weren't really what I wanted, and so I have to go out and get a lot of my own things. There is a ton of groundcovers -- about 100 of these little Japanese sedges alone, not to mention the hundreds of versions of sedums -- that I would have much preferred to be flowers, so that's kind of a drag. This is the hard part of ceding control to someone else to design something. I would have liked more time to have input and make plant changes; that's my biggest complaint and the thing I'm most unhappy about. So, lessons learned, on to the next project, I guess.
But it is a lot nicer, regardless of the plants I like. And everyone stops by on their walks to talk to me about it, and compliment it, and now I have some space and furniture to sit outside and sip wine with people, so that's all good. The kitties are loving it, though I think they miss some of their things, like the tree trunk they used to sit on and scratch on. I'm going to have to go find them a trunk. (And sorry, my livejournal layout cuts these off on the sides; you can see the whole pic by clicking it if you want.)
We decided to extend the pavers over to the stairs of the deck, just for safety's sake. We also put in new sod because the old grass got trashed, and was terrible and weed infested anyway. So now there's a continuous path of pavers from the side of the house on over, and the new gate has a little stair down to follow the slope.
So then they leveled up the ground by bringing in a metric ton of soil. Everyone had been so concerned with how "dangerous" my sidewalk was by being much higher than the ground around it, and even though, yeah, I fall all the time, each time I've leveled it up, it's compacted itself and come down. I don't know how long this'll last, but maybe with all these plants coming in as you can see here, it'll stay.
This is more of the finished landscape, although like I mentioned I'm adding and moving things around. I'm still not totally sold on the water feature -- it's really loud! and didn't really look like the one I thought it would -- but it does in fact attract birds in a big way, so that's a bonus, I guess.
My biggest disappointment is my own fault -- I bought a flat backed rain barrel for space issues, and it didn't work with the lovely rain chain. So I had to have hottie Chad put the gutter back on and use my feminine wiles on him to have him put it out front (where it's actually better, because they moved the gutter to next to my bedroom window when I had them redone 5 years ago, and the noise is horrible). They had built a little bench for the barrel to go on so I wouldn't have to bend down to hook everything up, d'aaawww.
Aside from being hot, Chad is also very sweet, and he fixed my Adirondack chairs that had been languishing outside or in the garage for the past umpteen years, busted and peeling and kind of gross. They're still gross, but at least they're not busted! They put them out on the deck, but Crate and Barrel had a huge outdoor sale right after this was finished, so I went and got some pieces to match that one chair -- I'd picked it up for super cheap due to a bent leg, but I was only able to match some of the pieces. One thing I do love is having that water spigot out back -- though the water pressure I have is insane. There's no such thing as a low flow on this.
Now I can has patio furniture! I don't think I've sat on a chaise longue in years. It's kind of nice! I moved the adirondacks out on the pavers, and it's a bit crowded on the deck, but that's OK. Just need a grill, but that's proving SO difficult. It's tough to choose. (Also, no money left.) I never needed one before, but I think I'll have to invest in an iPod speaker/player thingie so I can sit out back and read or work and listen to tunage. I picked up a cute little solar light, but it's still really dark back in that corner, so I have to figure out what to do there.
Now there is some sun today, so I best get out there and water. The watering never ends with new plantings.
The landscape designer really homed in on some things I said that weren't really what I wanted, and so I have to go out and get a lot of my own things. There is a ton of groundcovers -- about 100 of these little Japanese sedges alone, not to mention the hundreds of versions of sedums -- that I would have much preferred to be flowers, so that's kind of a drag. This is the hard part of ceding control to someone else to design something. I would have liked more time to have input and make plant changes; that's my biggest complaint and the thing I'm most unhappy about. So, lessons learned, on to the next project, I guess.
But it is a lot nicer, regardless of the plants I like. And everyone stops by on their walks to talk to me about it, and compliment it, and now I have some space and furniture to sit outside and sip wine with people, so that's all good. The kitties are loving it, though I think they miss some of their things, like the tree trunk they used to sit on and scratch on. I'm going to have to go find them a trunk. (And sorry, my livejournal layout cuts these off on the sides; you can see the whole pic by clicking it if you want.)
We decided to extend the pavers over to the stairs of the deck, just for safety's sake. We also put in new sod because the old grass got trashed, and was terrible and weed infested anyway. So now there's a continuous path of pavers from the side of the house on over, and the new gate has a little stair down to follow the slope.
So then they leveled up the ground by bringing in a metric ton of soil. Everyone had been so concerned with how "dangerous" my sidewalk was by being much higher than the ground around it, and even though, yeah, I fall all the time, each time I've leveled it up, it's compacted itself and come down. I don't know how long this'll last, but maybe with all these plants coming in as you can see here, it'll stay.
This is more of the finished landscape, although like I mentioned I'm adding and moving things around. I'm still not totally sold on the water feature -- it's really loud! and didn't really look like the one I thought it would -- but it does in fact attract birds in a big way, so that's a bonus, I guess.
My biggest disappointment is my own fault -- I bought a flat backed rain barrel for space issues, and it didn't work with the lovely rain chain. So I had to have hottie Chad put the gutter back on and use my feminine wiles on him to have him put it out front (where it's actually better, because they moved the gutter to next to my bedroom window when I had them redone 5 years ago, and the noise is horrible). They had built a little bench for the barrel to go on so I wouldn't have to bend down to hook everything up, d'aaawww.
Aside from being hot, Chad is also very sweet, and he fixed my Adirondack chairs that had been languishing outside or in the garage for the past umpteen years, busted and peeling and kind of gross. They're still gross, but at least they're not busted! They put them out on the deck, but Crate and Barrel had a huge outdoor sale right after this was finished, so I went and got some pieces to match that one chair -- I'd picked it up for super cheap due to a bent leg, but I was only able to match some of the pieces. One thing I do love is having that water spigot out back -- though the water pressure I have is insane. There's no such thing as a low flow on this.
Now I can has patio furniture! I don't think I've sat on a chaise longue in years. It's kind of nice! I moved the adirondacks out on the pavers, and it's a bit crowded on the deck, but that's OK. Just need a grill, but that's proving SO difficult. It's tough to choose. (Also, no money left.) I never needed one before, but I think I'll have to invest in an iPod speaker/player thingie so I can sit out back and read or work and listen to tunage. I picked up a cute little solar light, but it's still really dark back in that corner, so I have to figure out what to do there.
Now there is some sun today, so I best get out there and water. The watering never ends with new plantings.
