Rock and Roll...and Roots

That about sums up the past two weekends for me and the hubby.  And no, it was not because we were at an awesome concert or anything like that.  It was because we got down and dirty rebuilding a couple rock walls on the property, and ripped out a million roots from those beds, and two giant root balls from dead bushes we cut down a while back.

Two weekends ago the hubs was flying solo at the house because I was bringing out my crafty side by putting some things together for my sister-in-law's upcoming baby shower.  (I'm so excited for it..and I'm having a blast putting together all the decorations.  I will post pictures of everything I'm making, but not until after the big party, of course.)  Anywho, hubby found himself clearing out, what else, but a jungle to expose a rock wall that runs the entire length of our side yard.  We never even knew it was there because it was so overgrown, but the hubs discovered it while hunting around for our property markers.  So after two weekends he managed to clear back the massive amount of plant life, and rebuild the little wall.  It creates a great border on our property now.  I wish I had a before picture of what it used to look like, but since I didn’t even know it was there, I couldn’t tell that we’d be transforming that part of the yard.  Oh well...here is the after!

This past weekend I was back in action and joined the hubby to work on the house.  I started out just wanting to edge the bed and dig up some plants that found their way outside of the bed and it's rock wall boundary, but before I knew it, I was digging out every rock that surrounded the bed. 

I managed to get through 2/3 of it before the hubby finished up his wall from the previous weekend.  Thankfully he came over to lend a little muscle to my project.  By the end of the Giants game (psshhh to all of you who said I wasn't a fan because we were doing yard work while the game was on...duhhhh that's what the radio is for...go GMEN beating the Eagles...wooohoooo) we had the wall rebuilt and it was looking better than ever.  Okay, maybe not better than ever.  I realize we need to add some shrubs, mulch and get grass (not weeds) to grow around the bed.

We even took some extra rocks and rebuilt two other areas.  One was here because you can tell the dirt just washes out of this bed when it rains...so who knows how bad the mulch will run out of it when we get around to putting that down.  Here is the before....

And here is the after....now we are hoping things will stay in place in the bed.  And pleaseeee disregard the awful asphalt pathway to our front door.  We hate it, and when we hit the lottery it will go.  (Along with the previous owner's gutter drainage set up, ughhh, I hate looking at it!)

And yes, the green garage doors are going as well.  No sense in spending the time to paint them when we are just going to trade those puppies in for nice, insulated, energy efficient garage doors!

Then to cap off the productive weekend, hubby's Dad stopped over to lend a hand.  We had previously cut down two massive and dead bushes that were a major eye sore on the corner of our lot.  Now we were left with their big ugly roots in the ground. 

We previously tried to pull them out with his truck and a rope (since we had no chain on hand), and well, the score was ROPE - 0, ROOTS - 1.  This time we were armed with a chain and the roots stood no chance.  Next thing you know, we were raking the dirt back into the holes and covering it with grass seed.  Now let's just pray that the flooding rains we got this moring will help the grass to grow.

(No, there is no picture of the after for this yet...as staring at two patches of brown isn't that wonderful.  Hopefully we'll have something prettier to show you in the future.)