Krafty Kamzels: Adventures in Landscaping

When we first bought our home, we were excited and a bit overwhelmed with the size of our yard. The front looked fairly good from the street.

I mean, the grass was green and there were some roses and bushes under the front windows.

Not too bad to look at, until you got up close and saw all the patches of crab grass and the shaggy, misshaped flowers and bushes.

It was a bit more daunting to see the back. There really was not much to work with. Alot of dry and dead grass and weeds.

But there was definitely potential here. For the sake of our small but active dogs, we knew we had to get some grass in the back for them to run on.

(Though that never seemed to stop them from tearing across the backyard dirt...or mud, depending on the time of the year.)

After a while, my husband just could not stand the amount of crab grass in the front. It just looked uneven and whenever he tried to cut the grass, the crabgrass stubbornly would not be cut. And I could not stand the amount of dirt and mud brought into the house by our dogs. You can only clean the floors so many times in the same day before you start to get frustrated.

So we started digging up the front yard to remove the old grass. This took a while...

I'm sure the neighbors loved looking at our house for those few months while we waited for the grass to die.

Though the graves we dug in the front for Halloween were a hit with the kids.

We started in small steps...

The vampire pumpkins were particularly scary.

So, after Halloween, we started removing the grass in sections.

It was slow work.

In the meantime, the backyard of dead grass, weeds and dirt was enjoying a winter with some rainwater. Soon enough, the back became overrun with weeds.

And not just regular weeds, we were dealing with "cheese" weed. You cannot kill cheese weed with poison. You must smother it or pull it out by its roots.

It is particularly nasty.

Between battling the front lawn removal and the weeds overtaking the backyard, we knew it was time to just throw up our hands and turn this all over to the professionals.

We looked up a few numbers, asked around for referrals and made some calls. After getting a few bids, we decided to pass the work to our neighbor's landscape company.

They came out within a few weeks of our first meeting and got to work.

We decided to go with Bermuda grass since nearly every lawn on our block was the same and because of its durability.

They removed the weeds in our soon-to-be lawn area in both the front and back in one day. In addition to removing the old weeds and grasses, they evened out the dirt and fixed a few of our broken and misplaced sprinklers.

They laid down the sod at the end of the first day and into the second morning.

We came back the next weekend and added edging, landscaping fabric and mulch around the outside of the new lawn to give it a finished look.

We also decided to fence off the grass in the back to prevent our dogs from digging up the new lawn before it had a chance to root. Though our part-beagle Bacon decided to use some of his digging skills to get under the fence a few times. He is not the smartest dog in the world and was caught several times inside the lawn area because he could not find his way back out.

Silly dog.

The backyard is slowly coming together. We estimate that we have completed around 50-60% of the total space back there. Only three more areas need to be completed but we are trying to spread out the costs. On the list of must-haves are a deck, pergola, fire pit, paved patio and native flower garden.