Side Yard Waste Land

April 2013

 Side Yard April 2011

After finishing the fire pit we had about 2.5 seconds of celebration.  Then we turned around and looked at the South side of our house.   When we moved in, this area was covered in blackberries and was completely overgrown.  In 2011, I cut all of it out so that we could paint the house.   I then put down cardboard until we could decide what to do.  Well, we decided to store left over building materials there.  Then slowly over two short years the blackberries came back.  

  Side Yard 2013- Cringe

Starting at the corner I cut back all the blackberries.  It took about 4 yard debris bins to get it all and it seemed like I would never make it to our front yard. As I cut back the blackberries I was forced to deal with all our debris. We 'free' craigslisted the old wheelbarrow and the fence gate (scrappers delight).  We recycled the plastic garden pots, dumpstered our broken concrete, and neatly stacked the tens of pavers, bricks and rocks we found back there. Once we had a bare slate, I turned up the ground and tried remove ALL of the blackberry roots to avoid the same problem again.

Random pile of dirt from old owners, huge pile of pea gravel from us

Once again, this was backbreaking and I have no pictures of doing this work. We filled a whole wheelbarrow with all the roots we found under there.  I rotilled the space and Josh got to work fixing the grade. We needed to be very careful making sure we had a steady sloop away from the house, we also needed to meet the existing height of our neighbors side yard in a 10' wide area.   Josh's solution was to create a curvy dry creek bed feel that would be our pathway.  I loved it!

The sun is killing me here 

Using the fill from our random dirt pile we created mounded beds on either side and kept a free flowing feel to counteract our more ridgid lines over by the firepit. 

This is what is left of the forsythia and two limelight hydrangeas

Next, we put down landscape fabric for the pathway and then installed more boulders and river rocks to form the edge.  Using the remaining pea gravel we had left we filled in the pathway.   All we had left was to find plants that would be happy on the South side of the house.  We also had to find plants that will be happy in the constant shade along the fence line.  We started with a Lilac since these like sun, smell delicious and never get too big.

Lilac is on the left between the living room and bedroom windows

If you have been following- this is the third tarp in this post.  We were cleaning them throughout the project, which really made for some horrible pictures. Boo to the large cinderblock wall.

Fast forward to June when I took these, you can see the pathway.  I also added lavendar, little lamb hydrangeas and some sunflowers.  I am still looking for more plants for the fence line.  Also, please note the amazing moment the pathway ends into our stone fence.  Gate and new fence TBD.

A Cap, A Wall, An Arbor, A Path, and Back Pain

September 2012

To start off, I have explain that for about three months I did not take one picture of any of the work we did.  It was kind of like I blacked out.  Now I find that I only have pictures of our current progress which means there will be several entries and weeks of efforts shown in each picture.  They were also taken in wet, gray, sad Portland winter.  I apologize and promise to never do this again.

Since Josh had worked hard for weeks putting up the beds, I took on filling the beds with dirt-oooo so much dirt. I think it was about 3-4 yards of topsoil even with the 2 yards of native soil we already had on site. I put the first two yards in, then promptly hurt my back and actually had to ask Josh to finish up for me.  Fail.

While this was going on we had to tackle the area between the porch and the garage.  We needed to put up a fence to keep the dog in the back yard. At first we had designed a nice open railed fence to connect from the end of the raised bed to the garage.  However, we soon realized that this would mean anytime we mowed our lawn we would have to take the mower through the porch to get to the backyard.  Which was not going to work with our outdoor cozy room feeling.  I searched around and then my parents bought us an arbor/gate from Plow and Hearth for my birthday.  Yay!

Do I think we could have built an arbor/gate? Yes. Did I want to try and build one-- not really.  I put the arbor together- not so bad.  And we set it tight to garage giving us a kind of hidden path/entry into the backyard.  Our favorite cedar tree lent a secret garden air.  I liked it.  However, we now had about 3 feet from the raised bed to the arbor.  It seemed silly to design and make a fence that would only be 3 feet long.  We instead decided to build a wall, similar to the raised bed to wrap around the tree and connect to the arbor.  It's pretty formidable but would look a little less chaotic. Josh was now an expert and quickly built this and started working on the cap while I started brainstorming our path ideas. 

We had kept out some of the best concrete pieces from our depave to use as pavers.  I thought we should build a little path from the arbor out to the yard, then use the same pathway to connect the porch doors to the driveway, and then another pathway from the porch to the garage.  I am pretty honest about the fact that I am average at a lot of things.  I am a solid B at a variety of hobbies, tasks, mental capabilities.  There is one real thing I excel at: puzzles.  Honestly, tetris is my jam.  So I spent two whole days arranging the pavers (concrete chunks) to: fit close together, use a variety of sizes, keep straight edges were we needed them (along the driveway, the fence line, and the garage) and allow organic edges where it was not required.  It had to look thoughtful and at the same time random. It was on.  This is, of course, where I hurt my back.  Lifting, at times 60 lbs concrete pieces over and over again was a recipe for pain.  After I laid out the pieces they stayed that way for a few weeks before I could muster up the courage to mortar them in.

The good news was it was laid out and Josh had finished the cap, wall, and even built the half wall to close in the small area up against the house.  The space was really starting to look finished.