happy august + a garden redo

It is now officially August, everyone, and in case you didn't know it's the best month of the year. Sorry, December, but you don't have anything on the joyous month of my birth ;)

With the last month of summer upon us, it seems fitting to show off some of the hard work we've done in our back garden since the weather first turned warm less cold. As you might remember from my last post about our little house, both the front and back yards were covered in stones when we moved in. Yuck.

I don't know about you, but there's just something sad about not having anything living in your yard. There was (and still is!) a planter along one side of the fencing, made of old pallets and not even painted before it was put up. This, along with all the furniture in the backyard, was left to us by the previous owners. 

As you can see, it was far from the garden oasis we had in mind. So we did what anyone would do in our situation -- hired a dumpster, begged friends for help, and spent a whole weekend physically removing the stones from our garden. 

It was hard going but a bucket full of cold beers kept us going. And this is only some of our fabulous work crew!

It seemed like a fruitless task for a long time. Especially once we found out that there was not just one but two layers of these rocks down there. Seems the previous owners couldn't be bothered to pull up the first layer of red stones and just piled the white ones on top.

We had been planning on doing the front and back yards on the same day but due to the aforementioned surprise double layer of rocks, we actually filled the dumpster from just the back yard. Oops. After a hard earned party to round off the day, we began the process of putting down the seeds for grass. 

Everything we do has to be reviewed and approved by Hamish, #1 cat investigator extraordinaire. To be honest, the grass did come in fairly patchy. We also (not pictured) had 52 bags of dirt delivered to our house in order to build up the soil as what was there under the rocks was not good for growing much of anything. Have you ever woken up early on a Saturday morning so an ancient Scotsman could deliver you an entire pallet of dirt? No? Well, friend, you simply have not lived.

Of course, since the grass did finally decide to grow in we have not had a single nice day in which to sit out in our very lush (read: overgrown) garden. The awful blue planter has had a paint job and is now a very earthy sage green. I still want to paint that hideous red fence and shed, plus add a few more plants and flowers. Our wildflowers, which we attempted to grow between our conservatory and the house next door, did not even poke their heads above the ground. It's a work in progress, but isn't that grass so lovely and green? Seeing actual plants in my backyard makes all of that hard work worth it.

Have you ever had to do a massive yard redo? Anything that's still on your list to make it that perfect haven?

xoxo