Now You See It, Now You Don't

Remember back to this post, when I shared about the problem in our backyard?  We had a very large, circular garden.  It was there when we bought the house and were always a bit perplexed by it.  Why was it a circle?  Why was it so big?  Why was it put in under all the trees so sunlight rarely got to the plants in it?    

We liked the idea of a garden in our backyard, but this wasn't the best placement or design.  None of the vegetables we tried to plant ever grew, while the herbs only had mild success.  We decided to get rid of it and plant grass in its place.  Our plan is to make a cedar planter box on the other side of our backyard that gets more sunlight to house some herbs.

To get rid of that humongous beast was no easy task.  There were a lot of paver stones and dirt to deal with.  We decided to add a retaining wall/planter bed on the side of our house, so we were able to use some of the paver stones, gravel, plants and dirt that made up the circular garden.  That turned out really well and was a pretty inexpensive project since we already had most of the supplies.  

After tackling the new retaining wall/planter bed on the side of our house, we turned our attention to demolishing what was left of the circular garden.  

We decided to add the remaining plants to an empty corner of our backyard.  First, we filled in the low area with some dirt.  

Then, we added in the plants and filled in the area around them with rocks.  We weren't sure if they would survive since we transplanted them in the summer heat.  But we are happy to report the plants are thriving!  

Next up, we had to spread out the mound of dirt that was leftover.  We started by trying to break up the dirt with shovels and a dinky little claw tool, but that wasn't getting us very far.  So we turned to our nice neighbor Willard who owns every tool known to man.  He owns a tiller and was kind enough to lend it to us.  That certainly sped up the spreading-things-out process!  

After all the dirt was spread out, it decided to rain for about a week.  Normally, we'd be thrilled with free water for the grass.  But free water for the dirt just turned into a muddy mess.  Jazzy was especially fond of trotting through the mud when she went outside.  So we decided to try planting grass seed even though it's not recommended to plant grass seed in the summer.  We figured since we have a sprinkler system, we might as well put it to use.  We briefly threw around the idea of getting sod, but that was just too expensive.  Lucky for us, the grass grew!  Our fake owl we named Oscar helped keep the birds from eating all the grass seed.  Good work, Oscar!   

Our yard really does look a lot bigger without the circular garden.  Jazzy has some more room to roam now.  It looks slightly like some sort of burial mound, but the soil should compact a bit more over time.  

We still have a few other projects we want to tackle in our backyard.  We are currently working on the cedar planter box for an herb garden.  Adam has plans to build a shed.  We need to get a portion of fence installed.  (The neighbor's fence blew down in a storm and isn't planning to replace it anytime soon.)  And we have lots of paver stones to get rid of.  Anyone?