Phase II

About a year ago I started to landscape my mother's backyard. It was a daunting project. Overwhelming to me. Yes I have heard the story of how to eat an elephant, one bite at a time, but imagine having to eat the elephant ALIVE and the elephant could grow between bites!

The back yard was a mess. An area shaded by huge cedar trees that has always made growing grass impossible. Impossible for me anyhow. I am sure some smart guy from a golf course could make grass grow there. It contained a dilapidated shed/chicken coop. Fred, her former boarder (and hoarder) had saved and stored countless pieces of possible construction materials in every corner. And the weeds had taken over. I mean taken over. The weeds were so bad they would gang up on you if you dared to walk through the back yard. They were like a unruly, inner city gang of weeds, the worst kind.

Phase I

With the help of many folks we took down the shed/chicken coop. Last summer I re-gravelled the driveway and gravelled the area on the side of her house to almost the "good shed". I spent many weekends pulling weeds, weed whacking and swearing at the weeds. Then one weekend I realized I could not do it alone. I enlisted Terry, my brother-in-law to help.

Terry can DO things. Terry is a framer and if you are reading the newspaper you can guess that Terry's business is down. I hired Terry and shared my loose vision with him. Terry can do things and is an artistic guy. He assessed the back yard and refined the vision to include USING the hoarded scrap crap that Fred has stored in the yard. We came up with three zones and idea for a fence (to corral Nelly). And then as luck would have it, Terry got busy.

But Terry toiled week nights and weekends. His efforts are shown in what my mother is calling the great wall of China. The vegetable garden walled in by the cement blocks with its "Industrial" look.

I weed whacked, borrowed Uncle Don's roto-tiller and started to destroy the rest of the yard. Why 83 year old Uncle Don spent an hour or so tilling (what a man!). I trenched out the pathway and lined it with Fred's hoarded cement rails. I raked and hauled more crap that you could think was in that old dirt.

And Saturday, we gravelled the path, got excited and went plant shopping, got worried and stayed late to plant the plants. Was so impressed with the look that on Sunday I went for two loads of bark.

Now, at the end of phase two we have the beginning of a very nice looking, serene backyard.