"Wooded Lot"

When we were looking for houses last spring one of the things that drew us to the one we picked was the advertisement that it was on a "Wooded Lot". "Ooooh," we though, "it will feel like vacation all the time!" Well, if your idea of vacation involves critters, insects, and hours of manual labor, then, yes! We're on vacation all the time!

It's not quite that bad, but suffice it to say, we're pretty much in a constant battle to tame the wild that is our back yard.

When we bought the house, the trees had not yet leafed out (it was early Spring), and come to find out, the Sugar Maple out front was as dead as a doornail. So, we had to have that taken down, since it was basically hanging directly over the roof and one big storm would cause the whole thing to take out our master bedroom.

Ellie thought this was big fun to watch the "tree guys" take it down:

Campbell woke up from her nap and joined in the fun.

Timber!

Next, we discovered that the lovely green "grass" in the backyard was not grass at all, but actually was moss. While moss would be great for a cobble-stone walkway, it's less than ideal for a backyard with kids. It basically turns into a mud-slick every time it rains.

So... over the course of the summer and early fall we dumped 80 pounds of lime in the yard to start changing the pH of the soil, making it inhabitable by moss. Then, once the weather cooled off, we scraped up all the moss (NOT an easy task!) and over-seeded with fescue. (Pictures of that coming soon... the grass looks great, but Daniel hasn't had a chance to mow in about 2 weeks, so it's a little out-of-control looking! So, as soon as he mows, I'll post a pic :-)

We also figured out that the mud problem was in part due to the way that the rain water was draining off of the driveway. Daniel fixed that by installing drains to shunt the water underground and beyond the fence into the creek bed.

Digging those ditches was h-a-r-d work, given all the tree roots (again, gotta love the 'wooded lot'!)

In the meantime, Daniel found out the hard way that we had poison ivy growing ALL over the back yard! Really, the muddy moss was a blessing in disguise, because if it weren't for the constant mud, the girls would have been playing in the poison ivy without me even realizing it (I know, I should probably learn to recognize the stuff, but I'm a city girl and this is just a lot more nature than I've ever had to deal with in my back yard!)

After several applications of super-concentrated round-up and chopping up the roots of this huge vine that was growing on a tree, I'm happy to say that we're "Poison-Ivy-Free".

The last major yard project wasn't actually in the yard.... it was on the deck. Our lot is sloped so that the front door is actually on the second floor and below we have a walk-out basement. The deck is off the kitchen, which is on the second story. Since we didn't do very much playing in the yard this summer, the girls played a lot on the deck... that is, after Daniel built a gate to protect them from the Stairs of Death!! When we came to look at the house, these stairs concerned me, and we asked for the sellers to add an additional rail (which would bring them up to code) between each rail on the sides, but they refused and we didn't want to lose the house over it. So, as soon as he had some free time, I put Daniel to work on a gate so that I wouldn't lose any more sleep!

Seriously?! Those rails are so far apart, I think I could fall through!

He got it done in about 2 hours and made those slats so close together, even some of their toys can't fit through!

Lumber: $35

Tools: $(I don't know, we already had them!)

Diet Coke Fuel: $2

Peace of Mind: Priceless!

Whew! Looking at all this work we did over the last few months is making me exhausted all over again. Anyway, Moral of the Story: Next time I buy a house with a 'Wooded Lot', I'm going to make sure I can afford a gardener!