Yard Work

This weekend was a hot one in our neck of the woods. That didn’t stop us from getting outside and doing some work in our front yard, though. We’ve been unhappy with the look of it since we moved in, and our neighbors are not too thrilled with the white landscaping rock the prior owner was so fond of. Here’s a look at the area we’ve decided to tackle first just as we were starting on Saturday morning.

On Saturday, we pulled out all the “volunteer” rosemary. Rosemary bushes were planted around the edge of the yard area, but they self-seeded and created little mini-bushes — and some not so mini — all over the center of the yard. The weather was great and a strong breeze kept us cool while we worked.

Sunday, we cleared a bunch of the offensive white landscaping rock from the part of the yard we cleared of rosemary the previous day. This was a real chore. I don’t think we ever came up with a really efficient way to do it. We tried rolling up the weed barrier with the rocks in it, but they spilled out the edges. Further, the prior owner didn’t use conventional weed barrier for the entire yard; in some places, flattened out bags from mulch or potting soil were used, and we even found Home Depot shopping bags in some places. We also tried using the weed barrier to move the rocks into piles, which we then shoveled into buckets, but that seemed to take a long time as well.  And, we were left with this nifty pile to deal with when we were done.

So here’s what our neighbors have to look at now, until we get back to it next weekend. Probably won’t get any better, since we’ll just be pulling out the mature rosemary and removing still more rocks. But we’ve got plans, and it will eventually come together, slowly but surely.

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