The Back of The House

A year ago, we had the foundation replaced on the back end of the house. At the time, I had big plans to immediately fix it all up and replant the bushes and flowers that I had to uproot so they wouldn't get destroyed in the construction.

Fast forward a year later, and the plants I had taken out are still in planters looking fairly worse for wear, if not dead. Since I knew I'd have a little more free time on my hands in the evening, I figured I better kick my ass into gear and do something.


Last weekend, I weeded and removed stones from the side garden. Matt had picked up flowers we buy from Kiwanis every year for their fundraiser and I still had some succulent plants my mom had given to me last year that I hadn't managed to kill over the winter.

Lucky for us, one of our neighbors was getting a load of mulch delivered at a very cheap price, so we were able to have a yard of it dropped off on the corner of our lawn. Matt covered the side garden with mulch and we have plenty leftover for the next big project which is....

Attacking and hacking up the soil on the back of the house so I can at least plant some annuals with hopes for hosta at some point. The process is a bitch because when we had the foundation replaced, they filled back in with whatever soil and loose stones were around. Plus, our soil is pretty rocky to begin with.

Here's a shot after working for nearly 3 hours. Most of what you see on the sidewalk is loose stones.

I really don't have that far to go. If you look at the white pipe that comes down next to the house (gutter), that's where I stop. You can also get an idea of how big some of the rocks are by the pile on the flagstones at the bottom of the picture.