Yardwork, AKA Clearing Out The Jungle

I have so much to blog about and I've literally been too exhausted to pick up the camera and get the SD card out of it. Lucky for you I managed to persevere and get some updates drafted and here's the first of them!

One the second day we were in our house, Mark had a visit from the City of Lafayette Code Enforcement Agent. Apparently someone had called and complained about the vacant house and the state of the yard. Mark was able to explain that we just moved in, had big plans to fix up the place, and so forth. Considering the complaint was from before we owned the place, it was really no big deal and the agent was quite friendly.

This isn't even the before picture... but it's pretty close.

Weeds!

Considering that we knew we had at least one neighbor feeling pretty unhappy about the state of our yard, and the fact that the weeds were taller than me, we decided to make weed whacking a priority. Mark bought a fancy new weed whacker from Home Depot and we went to town. We tore out a big section for the dog to use in the back, cleaned up the curb side so we could park on the street, took out old invisible fencing wire, and did an overall general lopping/whacking of weeds. We also cleared out the pathway on both side yards. Finally, we trimmed down the giant juniper and shaped up the single hedge in front we think are going to keep. The yard waste bag count was 27! I think the end was higher than that plus we had about four cans we filled.

Still ugly... but a least it's not a fire hazard!

Now we can park in front of the house without getting attacked by weeds.

 We also cleared out the path to our side yard and waged a bit of a hedge war with the juniper.

Path to side yard... turns out there's cement under there.

The whole backyard was just as much of a mess as the front yard.

Backyard jungle

We bought some cute little pre-fab white picket fencing to mark off Sadie's potty spot. She's such a good dog that after three times going on command she now uses this area exclusively. The white fence is more of a visual marker for us than for her. No more worrying about stepping on a bomb while playing outside!

Sadie's potty spot

That hedge (in the center) has got to go.

After the backyard was mostly kinda cleared, we hired a fencer/landscaper to come in and remove the giant hedge on our property line and install a fence and a gated area for Sadie. We went with a cheap option and I'm still on the fence (cough) about that decision. But we have a functional and affordable fenced yard now complete with safe dog run for Sadie.

Ahh now that's a yard Sadie can play in

Sadie loves the extra 4 feet we gained by clearing that hedge!

Sadie's dog run

Obviously this was more of a demo phase for our yard than anything. Before we can get into real landscaping though, we want to have our sewer fixed (permits are in process!) and get our retaining wall fixed (have to wait for the sewer to be done). THEN we've got big plans for adding grass, clearing out some space on the hill, and bringing the whole yard to a much more appealing state. Maybe the people from Curb Appeal want to come do it for us and put us on TV?

We want to give a HUGE shout out to Annie and Stephanie, who literally made all this yardwork possible!