front yard – The Beehive

We continued with our work on the front yard this past weekend. Thankfully, it was not nearly as hot as last weekend (although I did neglect to wear sunscreen on Sunday and got a bit burned!). Last weekend, we cleared out scattered rosemary bushes and white landscaping rock from the center of the yard area. This weekend, our goal was to remove the mature rosemary and white landscaping rock from the top of the slope.

The mature rosemary plants were much more of a struggle than the smaller ones we removed last week. The roots tend to grow sideways, which meant we did not have to dig terribly deep, but there were a lot of roots and some of them were very large.

Steve also somehow twisted his elbow pulling out those big plants, so he was mostly sidelined on Sunday. That meant I did the majority of the rock-shoveling and carrying it into the back. Tough work for one person!

Here’s what are neighbors are looking at now:

Next weekend we’ll be heading down to the bottom of the slope. Hopefully we can clear the last of the rock, but I’m sure the remaining mature rosemary will be an ordeal, as will the large, unidentified bush in from of the Mulberry tree, so it may take us a while to get that done.

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.

Tag: front yard

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