Transforming Our Yard: A Labor of Love
Our yard is in!!!!
If you could only see the crazy celebratory dances here to finally have grass in. How this even came about is a miracle because we weren’t going to be able to do anything with the yard for at least another year. More on that later… This was a big labor intensive project to me from Jeremy, and I feel very loved. He worked tirelessly for weeks!
Challenges
I’m not sure I can express how much this Act of Service means to me. It made me feel like my husband hears me, and cares about making my life better. I had a lot of dark moments out there pulling weeds for hours with no end in sight. Without fences all the weeds from other yards would just blow into our yard. It was a lose-lose situation since even pulling the weeds and leaving bare ground with nothing to replace it just invites more weeds.
The weeds that thrived in the yard were stubborn Morning Glory vines with deep invasive roots, seed pods that could survive for over 50 years, and extensive coverage. The recommendations from online were to burn or steam the weeds! It was probably ridiculous how hyper-vigilant I was at trying to make sure there were no tiny parts of roots all the way down, and it was a painstaking process that sucked up a lot of time, so I loudly complained about it and resented my need to try to keep it under control when it so clearly wasn’t.
Time ran away with us. After digging a few trenches by hand last year, we ran out of time so it waited until this year. This year Jer broke his body and raced against the time when he had to leave for school again so that he could deliver. He told me that it was important to him to fulfill the commitment he made to me that he would put the grass in.
Process
We live in an area prone to drought so before preparing the ground and putting in the grass, we needed to install sprinklers. Last year we created the irrigation plans with the help of our local sprinkler company, and purchased all the pipes and sprinkler supplies at that time. It sat in our side yard for another season while we finalized how we would actually install the sprinklers.
Although he had help from me and several neighbors, the majority was all Jeremy! He dug all those trenches, set the irrigation system, raised half of our yard up with tons of filler soil, wheelbarrowed and spread all the top soil to make it even, compressed areas, then wheelbarrowed and laid out the sod.
Instead of taking our chances with planting seed, we arranged with our neighbor for a shipment of sod. It was delivered on a palette using a large truck with a forklift machine, and Jer carried the majority of it up the side hill to the yard. We’re babying the grass making sure we water and cut it properly so that it doesn’t die over the summer.
Recommendation
Talking with people who know what they’re doing made such a difference. We tried to figure as much of it as we could on our own first. One of our neighbor friends works with sprinklers and volunteered to help with any questions we had when he found out we were putting in irrigation.
Our backyard neighbor worked on his yard at the same time as us, and we became friends. He happens to be a quality landscaper, and was very generous and helpful. He made recommendations, pointed out things we missed, let us borrow awesome tools that were slightly different than ours but for some reason worked way better (even down to the handle on the shovel), hooked us up with suppliers for top soil and sod, and was a source of emotional support. We love our neighbors!
Before and After
We are so grateful our weed forest is now a usable yard, thank you sweetheart! He turned something that brought me so much stress and discouragement into a new beginning and a place for family time.
What projects are you working on lately?
-Kat
