PROJECT #6 - THE BACKYARD!!

We bought a new house... and with a new house came a new backyard.... aka BAKED DIRT!!  It really was.  The entire backyard was dirt, and as the summer got hotter and hotter, the dirt got little cracks, and it was baked.  There were no weeds, no rocks, just dirt.  As it started cooling off a little, we did get 2 weeds, and I let them grow a long time, then eventually pulled them out.
So we thought and thought and thought about the backyard, and what we wanted to do with it.  My first thought was, I needed a pool.  Andy said no.  After further thought, and Andy's job moving locations, I decided that he was right and that we should not get a pool just to possibly move in a couple years...  Andy decided that he really wanted some grass.  I thought that was a great idea.  I also told Andy before we knew we were moving for sure, that if we ended up in Arizona that I was going to plant citrus trees!!  Other than those few things nothing else was official.

Last summer we asked my dad, and my cousins (who live in Tucson) if they would help us put in some irrigation when the weather had cooled a bit.  They both agreed, and we finally were able to schedule it for the last weekend of February.  The weather had been great, and then Saturday came and it started to POUR!! It rained and rained and rained!  In the end the boys were able to put all of our irrigation into our now mud pit, and even the Home Depot tool rental department was impressed they lasted through the rain.
The week prior to the irrigation, my dad and I did some extensive research on citrus trees, including visits to all the local nurseries, Home Depots, Lowe's and lots of Google time.  On the last day when I had decided trees I wanted, I ran into Costco for something else and what did I find?? Citrus Trees and for only $20!  They even had the types of lemon and lime I was looking for!  Then my we drove to one last nursery and they had the orange!  The ground had dried enough on Monday that my dad and I were able to plant the citrus trees, it still was a big mess!!

The next weekend I kept talking to Andy how right by the citrus trees at Costco, they also had palms.  I thought it would be fun to have one, and Andy thought so too, so we went to Costco and they were out!!  I remembered that I had seen them at Home Depot as well, so we went there and they ended up being even cheaper!!  We bought one, and drove home with it out the window of Andy's car!! (it's little.)

So in all my thinking, I decided that I wanted to extend the back porch a little with cement pavers, so I searched and searched and finally found some that I wanted.  With a lot more research and planning Andy decided that we could go ahead and put them in.  He was SOOO AMAZING and did most of the work by himself while I was at work!  They look SO GOOD!!!  We also found out that Pati and John were coming to visit, so we tried to work really hard and get as much done as possible before they got here!!

Somewhere in the middle of this time line I also decided to plant various other things around the house to provide a little more shade and privacy than we currently have, and to plant some grapevines and a heat tolerant raspberry bush along the back wall.  They are my little experiments to see how they do.

Now the pavers were laid, we had to decide what to do around the grass to separate it from the rocks.  We started thinking about the options and then talked with some of our friends, who had been helping a little with the backyard, and found there was someone in the ward who does curbing side jobs for a great price!!  We called and scheduled him to come the next day I had off work!!  They were amazing!! The curbing was able to be done in an afternoon, then we needed to be careful with it for a couple days.  We then ordered for the rock to be delivered in a couple days and Andy again was AMAZING and worked really hard to spread it out.  He wasn't able to get it all done before his parents arrived, but him and his dad worked REALLY hard and got it done the next day!!  It seems like it is getting so close to done, but still so far.  Eventually we will be able to put sod down in the middle dirt, put flowers around the trees with some bark and put up trellises for the grapes and raspberry bushes.  Until then...

THANKS SOOO MUCH TO EVERYONE WHO HELPED!! WE REALLY APPRECIATE ALL THE HARD WORK!! (BUT WE'RE NOT DONE YET!!)