My back yard...

For the last month, I've been going like gangbusters on the weekends to get my back yard looking nice. Nice being a relative term, of course. I should probably say NICER. And I'm getting there. I've decapitated hundreds of dandelions, picked up petrified dog poop, and trimmed trees. I've even created flower beds after eleven years of living here.

Last weekend I planted shrubs! It was back breaking work--the soil is either full of clay, which isn't too bad to till, or just plain hard and dry and filled with rocks. The section next to the house where I planted my new shrubberies also had huge dried up dollops of cement from when they built the house! Ugh. Needless to say, those bad boys had to be dug out by hand. The dirt had to be sifted and mixed with garden soil and, well, you get the drift.

But with the help of DD and Sonshine, I finally got my Chinese wisteria and pair of azaleas planted.

BEFORE:

Dry, hard-packed dirt filled with rocks and cement droppings from the foundation.

DURING:

DH watches while DD mixes the native soil (dirt!) with store bought garden soil.

The wisteria is in the ground, but the azaleas wait in their plastic containers to the right.

Sonshine adding the native soil (dirt!) to yet another batch of the native/store-bought soil mixture. You can see everything's in the ground. We're just trying to get enough soil on top of the plants to bring it level with the bricks on the house. We didn't quite make it, even with the cedar mulch, but close enough. I'll add more when I add more plants.

AFTER:

They don't look like much yet, but hopefully in a year or two they'll have filled out quite nicely.

And I'm pooped, but still have a few things to do in the yard and along the stretch of wall on either side of the azaleas, but these things (tilling, hauling the dirt, mixing the dirt, planting the plants) take a surprising amount of time and effort, so I'm pacing myself.

Next up on the TO DO list for the back yard: my bird feeder bed and killing the weeds in the part of the yard that actually has grass still growing!

Any plans for your yard??