Trying to Help

A couple of weeks ago the stars aligned and provided us with everything we needed to finally get some work down in our backyard--the weather was nice, Ryan had 3 days off from work in a row and I wasn't hosting a single event. We decided to tackle the extremely overgrown backyard. The neighbors tell us that the previous owners never did anything out there...in the 10 years that they owned the house. It shows.

Other than hiring professionals to remove 2 HUGE pine trees and 2 smaller pine trees in the backyard, we avoided this space completely. Rabits live out there and who knows what else. The swing set was dumped in pieces in the corner of the yard by our movers and there it remained. The whole place needs to be killed, tilled, leveled and then made "pretty" somehow. Wish us luck!


Ian was more than happy to grab some tools and get to work. Since we aren't trying to save anything back here, there's no harm letting him go at it! By the way, that brick path that you see in this picture had been hiding for almost a year. It only took me 30 minutes or so to rediscover it.


Ian gets distracted easily. If we don't keep him focused, he finds his own way of "helping" us. Don't you just love his use of the rake?


Nathan genuinely wanted to be useful, at times. He is trying to master the use of this huge rake.


Now what, Mom? Thank you for trying, Nathan.


16 bags filled, 11 more to go. Now onto the last 1/3 of the backyard this weekend. Uncovering the living grass just means that Ryan now has to mow the front yard AND the backyard. Maybe this wasn't such a great idea.