And....we have grass (lawn, that is)

Sorry for the lack of posts, we have been very busy both with the yard and on other things as well.
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We finally got the planter area in the middle of our front yard filled with bark (took a lot of time for me to spread out landscape filter fabric and then move 23 yards of bark by hand). You can see the planter I am referring to in the middle of this photo.
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I think you should also be able to see the grass starting to grow in the dirt areas, and this is very exciting for us. I weeded about an acre of yard area by hand and then spread the grass seed and fertilizer using our riding mower and a tow-behind spreader I borrowed from my sister and brother-in-law. We then turned on the sprinklers and crossed our fingers!
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It has been about a week, but it looks like the grass is starting to come in OK! Another month or so and I can start thinking about mowing....

Play structure finished!

OK, so between the hot weekends (working morning and evenings only), trips out of town, and other scheduled events, we finally finished the play structure for our son. Because of size limitations we built our own instead of getting a prefab one. We probably saved a few hundred $$$ this way, but it was also a LOT more work. I think it turned out OK, but when doing a project like this you always learn that you could do things better a second time.....

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We used Rubber Bark (blue!) around the structure - didn't want to use bark or rock. We were in a hurry to get stuff delivered at the time, but I found out later you can get it much cheaper ordering online than delivered by the landscaper. Should have known.....I didn't think the price difference would be all that significant, but it was.

Sorry for the lack of updates - been really busy! Mowstrips are in for the front yard areas as you can see in the photos above and below. Sprinklers are all installed except for the drip system - I am doing that myself. We put in a little flagstone section to allow for easy walking from the drive to the sidewalk.

In the back yard, the play structure is under construction. I have been working on some of the driplines in the planter areas as well.
Although not reflected in some of the photos (they are a bit dated, it got too dark for me to take photos after I was done today), I have also been placing more weedblock fabric in the front yard planter areas.

Front yard starts soon, back yard poking along

Here is a couple photos stitched together (sorry, not the best result ever) showing the, um, "raw" nature of the front yard. In general, the disked area will be lawn and the weedy areas will be planter areas. The landscapers should start their work soon, maybe in the next few days.

I have been working on putting in all the weedblock fabric in planter areas. After that comes driplines. Then bark and rock. Then maybe we get to sit back for 10 years and wait for the trees to mature. :)

They have finished the backyard

You can see the trees have been planted and staked. they did a final tilling of the soil and smoothed it out.

There is the stack of "rubber" bark (shredded tires, I think) for the play area. We need to build a play structure and get it in, then we can add the rubber bark. It is going to be in the pinched oval shape behind the closest tree in the photo above.

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The square area right behind the play area is where the sandbox is going to be.

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We have a couple more trees to plant, then I need to put down the landscape (weedblock) fabric, then we need to spread some bark.

We have grass!

The grass is in! Looks so much better with grass than dirt and weeds. They are to be finished tomorrow with the backyard (for their scope of work - I will still have lots to do). Tomorrow they are planting the trees and doing touch-up work. We are thinking of having them also do some work in the front yard as well, given their level of service. We'll have to talk about that and see if we want to proceed that way....

Getting there....

So here is our new side patio and garden boxes in the side yard. I built the boxes with redwood and went overboard with the brackets, but they will NOT come apart like others I have seen.

You can see here that the sprinklers are in for the lawn, PVC is stubbed up in planters for me to run dripline later, the concrete mow strips are in, and the Benda-board is mostly in for the pathways. Sod should be in the next couple days, and a few new trees as well. We also bought some trees on our own to save with costs and we will put those in as soon as they are ready for us to do so.

Back yard work begins!

This may only have spotty updates, but there is some work going on around the house.
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We have started work on the backyard. Here is the before picture from earlier this year:

And here is what it looked like today after work was done:

I had sprayed Roundup to kill all the weeds last week. The contractor disked the entire back yard area and imported soil for some landscape mounds. They also started trenching for sprinklers. Hopefully all the work will be complete in 2 to 3 weeks!