Sunday, October 4, 2009

Piles

We have a lot of piles around here. Sometimes it seems like all we do is move piles around from one place to another.

Piles of bricks and rocks...



Piles of broken up sidewalk...



Piles of wood and lathe and trash...



Piles and piles of dirt...



And even more piles of bricks and pavers and rocks...



What's with all the piles and mess?!?

Well dear friends, we're doing a little project in our backyard. Okay, it's a huge project actually: regrading. There is a ton of dirt sloping toward the house (dumping water in through the windows when in pours rain) and a ton of dirt sloping toward the garage (dumping water in under the door and possibly other ways when it rains).

So we've been cleaning out our yard of all the piles of wood leftover from summer projects and finding places to pile them out of the way. We also decided to redo the pathway around our house. Let me give you a picture of what that looked like when we moved in: for the first 8 feet or so there was an elevated (who knows why) broken up sidewalk. Then along the side of the house for another 15 feet or so there was pea gravel. Set in the middle of that in one spot were four or five large pavers (some actual rock, some made out of concrete). And under all the pea gravel and pavers - more giant pieces of broken up sidewalk! Then for another 8 feet or so there were more pieces of sidewalk, more pea gravel, bricks, rocks, retaining wall stones, and other random things, all sunk down - some so low that they were covered and we had no idea they were there till recently. In fact, there were even double layers of sidewalk in some areas!

Then as you moved on through the backyard toward the garage the "paving" consisted of carpet squares and pieces of wood. I kid you not. We got rid of the carpet and wood almost immediately. All the bricks, rocks, pavers, and concrete got pulled out yesterday and Friday. And piled.

Here is our innocent, unsuspecting backyard:



Here we are constructing our new raised beds:





And here Jeremy is, driving in his big toys (some earth movers we rented for a day or two):



Not bad for an hours work!

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