The “before”

When we bought our house, I looked at the yard and went “huh, it’s pretty big” and then moved onto the first order of business: renovating the interior to make it livable. Our house is a lovely mid-century modern/modest ranch previously owned by a 101-year-old lady whose son had wanted her to move into assisted living. We like that the former owner was a stubborn person with great longevity! Needless to say, she hadn’t had the ability to do much upkeep on the house in recent years and we had some big projects. If you want to know more about that, I could talk about it for far too long. Just say “light fixtures” and I’ll be off and running.

After completing said renovations, I turned my attention back to the land surrounding our house and went, “what now?”

We have about 1/3 acre and our lot is basically a trapezoid, with the back yard being wider than the front. The front yard consisted of terraced lawn (we’re on a hill), some vinca major threatening to take over the world, some scraggly unidentified bushes in front of the door, and a sprawling juniper. The back yard consisted of lots and lots of lawn, a big patch of gnarly weeds that had once probably been a vegetable garden, and a nice perennial border along the side that had clearly been cared for for many years but was being threatened by weeds. The right side yard was full of that dreaded red lava landscaping rocks and the left was a shady steep slope down to the neighbor’s fence. (Pictures at the bottom of the “before.”)

I decided over the winter that I would make a plan to overhaul this yard and, as I am often wont to do, was unable to restrain myself from going big with changes in the first year. I was eager to start on my Big Yard Plan as soon as the ground started to thaw in the spring.

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Kicking rocks? More like picking rocks