Well, we've always had a "yard". But now it's starting to look like a YARD. Allow me to explain. First, cast your mind back about five years. . .
2007: Jared comes home one night and excitedly tells me about the house he drove past on his way home from work. He shows me the MLS listing and I agree to go look at it, along with a few other houses in the neighborhood. When we stop at the house Jared was raving about, I suddenly understand his excitement: it has a second garage in the backyard. Long story short, we buy the house and Jared eagerly waits for the snow to melt so he can get to work. It quickly becomes apparent that the garage is not salvageable. So, with a little help from Jocke and Dan, down it goes.
2008: The garage has been leveled, and now we get to work removing the overgrown shrubs along the west and south.
(Pay no attention to me looking goofy in the foreground--check out that tired little fence behind me. . .)
Along the south, as we remove the shrubs we realize this fence is going to need to be replaced soon. As we pull out the bushes along the west fenceline, we realize that a) our yard is several feet higher than our dear neighbor's, and b) now that we've removed those shrubs, there's nothing to keep our yard from sliding right into hers. We need a retaining wall. So we buy a tractor:
(Or, wait, did we buy the tractor earlier, and use it to pull out the shrubs? I can't remember anymore. . .)
Jared finishes building the retaining wall *just* in time--the cement truck comes on a cold and rainy November morning, and with some more help from Jocke and Dan, the wall is completed.
2009: Jared buys a backhoe attachment for the tractor and the real work begins: digging out the western half of our yard and putting in a rock retaining wall. It takes all of this summer and part of the next. At this point I admit that the tractor/backhoe really was a good purchase--how else do you move tons (literally, tons) of dirt and boulders the size of small appliances?
2010: At some point Jared takes a closer look at the foundation from the second garage and has the sad realization that the foundation just isn't fixable. So he builds a new one. It also makes a really hand repository for the extra dirt and rocks we have to move around.
Future home of the Man Lair
2011: Our goal for this year is to install sprinklers and hydroseed to restore the lawn that has been pretty much massacred by the past 3 years of work; however, those plans are waylaid when a winter windstorm knocks down the fence along the south side. Sure, we could have just fixed the section that fell over. . .but we might as well take advantage of the complete lack of lawn and replace the whole thing.
In fact, while we're at it, we figure we ought to install the raised patio we were talking about, too. No sense in putting in a nice new lawn and then tearing it up the next year with trailers and wheelbarrows, right?
Road base for the patio foundation
Our redneck "dump truck"
The patio takes longer than anticipated (oh, but isn't it beautiful?) and before we can finish the sprinklers, it's late fall. Still no lawn, but I get a consolation prize of some nice raised beds for next year's vegetable garden.
2012: Facing the prospect of another yardless summer as we wait for a seeded lawn to grow, I look into sod--and wouldn't you know it, it's not nearly as pricey as we'd feared. After some final grading and finishing touches to the sprinklers, we're ready. With some help from Jocke (again!), Jay, and Aaron, the grass is down in just a few hours.
Ben watches the work from his perch
And voila, our backyard is transformed from the neighborhood's best dirt bike course to our kids' new favorite place to play. We even had enough sod to patch up the front lawn, which was looking pretty sorry after we had to dig out and replace the water main in February when it broke during some basement renovations. (But don't get me started on all that. The front yard is a story for another post. The basement. . .well, that deserves its very own blog.)
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