Before and Afters of the Yard

Adam and I were talking the other day about how crazy it is that we’ve been in our Payson house for almost 4 years now.  We can’t believe how fast the time has gone.  This was supposed to be a 3-5 year house for us but now we can’t picture ourselves anywhere else.  It is home – and we love where we are.  We also can’t believe that after almost 4 years we are FINALLY almost to the point that our yard is complete.  Its been a looooong process with a LOT of blood, sweat, popped blood vessels, sore muscles, blistered hands, and long weekends but we are excited to almost be finished.  This year we focused on getting our curbing in and PLANTING.  We added it up and we think we planted just over 100 new trees, flowers, and bushes.  We also still have about 600 tulip bulbs and 300 daffodil bulbs to plant as well in Oct.  We can’t wait to see what the yard looks like next spring when all our new flowers come up and to see the beauty our trees and bushes make as they get bigger.  Next year will sure be a fun one for us! 🙂  

Anyway, I wanted to take a look back at what we started out with so that I don’t feel quite so bad that its taken us almost 4 years finally be almost done.  Here are some before and afters showing the love and care we’ve put into making this home and yard ours.  

Before moving in Oct 2008

Spring of 2010.  You can sort of see the tiny little weeping cherry tree we planted and our Asian looking tree all the way to the left of the picture.  Tulips and daffodils are coming up as well.  

And this is now.  Sept 2012.  We have a new deck, curbing, and our trees and flowers are sure a lot bigger.  

This was our backyard when we first moved in.  This picture was taken after we burned all the dead weeds.

And this was what the hill looked like after we had it tiered off in rock and before we put in our steps and patio.  

And this is our hill now after planting Iris’s, Salvia, and a host of other plants.  

This was the view from the top of that same hill looking down in 2009

2010 after we had it tiered

And now with the curbing in.  We still need to cover our landscaping paper with rocks or bark – but some of our rocks have fallen down (you can see some of the slide in the below picture) so we are waiting to get those fixed so we can bring in more dirt and finish it off.

Here is a view of the South side of our house looking up.  The grass was dead, we had a huge dirt hill (which you can sort of see partly to the left) and we had a big “ditch” next to our house (not good for flooding).  

And this is the yard now.  We brought in a bunch of dirt, had it tiered in rocks, and then put the curbing in as well as new grass.  We also knocked over the dirt hill which is now where our garden is and flower garden.  

Here’s another look from the South corner of our yard looking up.  

This was our backyard in 2009 after we burnt down all the weeds (you should have seen it before! Yikes!)

It has a pretty severe downhill slope – so we decided to put in a 3rd tier of rocks and tons of dirt to level it out and make it “playable” for the kids.

Here’s a look from the other side.  Oh and here you can see the weeds we burned. 🙂  

And here is a picture of the backyard now.  We put in a patio, put grass down, put in a play area for the kids, and then did curbing around the entire yard.  This has now become one of the favorite places for all the neighbor kids to come and play and usually we have between 2-3 kids over each day.  We love it!

These are some of our new flower beds we created when we put in curbing around the house.  Here I have planted a spirea bush and some hostas.  

I also had them create this new flower bed in the corner of our yard.  I love the pop of color it adds to the other side of our house.  

I also had them create this new HUGE flower bed all the way down our property line to the South of our house.  This runs all the way down to our garden boxes at the bottom of the hill.  I LOVE it and can’t wait to see how this adds to our yard when all the bushes and flowers I planted get bigger.  

 Here is a look at our backyard from the South end in 2009.  Notice the crazy amount of rocks and the sloping hill that was dangerous for kids to play on. 

And check out that same area now!  Ahhh so much better!

The view from the other side looking at that corner.  

Here is the North side of the house looking down in 2008.

Here is the North side of the house NOW looking up with our new curbing and bushes planted.