When people say putting in a yard is a lot of work – they aren’t kidding! When Mark and I were looking for a home here in Wyoming, we weren’t necessarily looking for a “new” home but that is what we found. There are a lot of things we love about our home and we are trying to make it more and more our own.
Last year had a LOT going on for us and putting in a yard just wasn’t in the budget. But we knew this year it needed to be a priority. Once the snow melted we started to make some plans.
Things cost WAY more than I thought {isn’t that how it always goes…} and we have changed our plans so many times. But I finally think we have a path moving forward. WOOT!
We took a “character building” day and pulled out all the weeds in the front, side and back yard. The kids were such troopers and worked really hard. We then payed someone to come and level out our yard for us. This has been a bit of a tricky thing. Our property has weird slopes. We knew we couldn’t get it level and so our goal was to just make it the best we could. Luckily, I think we have gotten there.
There has also been a fair amount of give and take that has happened in this project. We decided not to do sprinklers in the front. This was a rough one for me, as I have talked about my yearning for color. Given the area that we live in, we decided we would go for a low-maintenance front yard. Despite not putting grass, we wanted to do something nice with the rock and still get lots of native plants to hopefully (eventually) fill out the space. I think we have a nice plan in place and I am itching to get it underway.
The same man we hired to level out our yard, also put in sprinklers in the backyard. He was really great to work with and it was such a blessing that we found him {we were really struggling to find someone that had experience but also wasn’t trying to retire solely off of our project!}.
Most of the back yard will be grass {sod is coming in a WEEK – YAY!}, except for about a quarter of it where we are planning to build some garden boxes {most likely not happening this year}. I can’t wait for this space!
The final step for this year will be putting in a fence. I am a little sad about this because I love looking out the back of our house and seeing open land. But {because of the open land} there is a lot of wildlife that would make maintaining our yard difficult. We are deeming it a necessity.
I am trying to be patient as all of the parts are moving along, but I cannot wait to be able to use this space! And I cannot wait to feel grass between my toes again. And see flowers – lots and lots of flowers.
