Mother's Day Project

Who would have thought I'd be this excited to look in my backyard and see a bunch of dirt! Ever since we bought our house three years ago, I have wanted to plant a garden. With Gary's deployment, crazy work and school schedule, and me being pregnant last summer we've never been able to clear the spot for the garden. Finally, this weekend we were able to get it ready for planting and it was a great Mother's Day present.

We still need to put in the dividers we got from my next door neighbor, and we'll have to put up the chicken wire to keep the dog out, and we still need to actually plant something, but we've made a lot of progress and I am very excited about it!

I wish I would have taken a picture of the area before we ever did anything to it, though I do have it on video. The previous owners put down gravel, then had some larger red rocks on top of the gravel, and then put some boulders to make a border on top of that. This picture was taken after the boulders and red rock were hauled away while Gary was deployed. The picture below is all the red rock we hauled away. The previous owners went to a lot of work to haul in all that rock because it sure was a lot of work to get rid of it all. This was taken a year ago when the lilacs were torn out and the wood fence was taken down so we could get the vinyl fence put in.

For our garden project, Gary rented a sod cutter to cut out the grass so we could remove it.

Then we brought in one truck load of top soil. Josh got out his little shovel to help Gary unload it and Sydney was content to lay down on the dirt in the back of the truck and watch.

As we moved the sod, Josh collected worms and presented them to me. Just what I'd always wanted!

Grandpa Glen convinced Josh to plant the worms in the garden.

This is the area the previous owners used for a garden. It was pretty small and between the fences and shed, really didn't get much sun light so we filled it in with the sod. There was a spot on the other side of the shed that was just dirt and also a spot over by the new garden that we filled in with the grass we cut out.

This is Gary tilling after we unloaded two truck loads of top soil and one truck load of compost. It has been a lot of work to transform our back yard over the past few years and I very much appreciate all who have helped! Thank you, thank you, thank you Gary, Dad, Melissa, and Manookin family. We could not have gotten the garden in and made all the improvements to our yard without everyone's hard work and willingness to let us borrow trucks and tools to do it. I feel so blessed to have such a great family and neighbors who are always so willing to help out and I am so grateful.

Also on Saturday I got a new kitchen table! It really feels like Christmas at my house! We ordered the table two months ago from RC Willey and they finally delivered it. There's a story behind it that I won't get into right now, but basically I will NEVER buy anything from RC Willey again. I'm very excited to have a new kitchen table. It was a great Mother's Day weekend!