Pretty Flower in Your Backyard - Leadbelly

This summer we worked on making our backyard pretty and useable. The previous owners had let it go and it was quite a mess. Last year we built a wall in our side yard that matches the walls in our backyard.

Then we removed a couple of tons of dirt from the backyard and piled it up in front of the wall. With a steep slope and nothing to prevent erosion we had quite a lot of extra dirt in the backyard. At some point somebody had put in sprinklers and sod because we found the sod netting and sprinklers burried as deep as 6 inches in places.

We (read Ron) also built a very nice garden shed. So all the garden tools can be kept in it and Ron can have the garage for all his cars and projects.

We put in a beautiful patio. We bought the bricks back in May when we got our tax return and luckily the bricks we wanted were on sale! We laid the patio on the hottest day of the summer, of course. We were just so excited to get it done we couldn't wait for a cooler day. Since then we have put in the small blocks to make raised flower beds around the patio. I would have liked to choose another style of blocks, but back 10 years ago when the first walls were built there weren't as many choices and we want to stay with the same theme. We also added a few more railroad tie and fence posts at the top of hill so we can put gardens of there also.

This is the before picture. February 10, 2008.

This is the after. September 20, 2009.
You can tell its the same backyard because of the old discolored fence pickets. The redwood tree and the brick wall also look the same.

Before. February 10, 2008.
This one is still a work in progress. September 20, 2009.
But what a differnce already. Yep, same ugly air conditioner. Same fences, trees, and oleanders. Everything else: different.

For our backyard we just need some patio furniture now.