DIY - Day 2

So, I think we need to have a team of scientists come out and study the dirt in our backyard, as it is easily the hardest dirt I have ever encountered. Our shovels were literally bouncing off of the soil as we were attempting to dig it up and loosen it in order to plant the bushes, even with our full body weight on top of the shovels. I'm sure it doesn't help that we haven't had rain in 26 days and the sun has literally been baking the ground the whole time. We quickly had to admit that we were beat. We needed more power.

Abnormally hard dirt, meet your nemesis:

For a mere $42 we were able to rent that lovely gas-powered tiller from Home Depot. It still needed to be a little more powerful, but it got the job done faster than we would have without it. It did more "shaving" of the top layer of dirt than actually tilling it, which turned out to be a slower process than I anticipated. Wetting the soil seemed to help. Some.
Now we know better for the future--there is no such thing as "too much power", especially in a landscaping tool.

Here I go, spreading mulch:

And the finished product:

DIY - Day 1

This weekend was used up by our first real landscaping project for the house. I have never built a flowerbed before, but we understood the mechanics of it, so I bought some bushes from work I have been wanting to plant outside our breakfast area windows for a while, we got our soil, mulch and another shovel, and set to work. Only two trips to Home Depot for this one!

The project was only supposed to consume an afternoon. However, as we started clearing sod (sans sod cutter), I began to realize that this was going to be a job for at least one power tool after all. We did not end up renting the sod cutter because I figured it was such a small area, a sod cutter would have been what my brain labled as "overkill". Once we began clearing the grass, I realized overkill would have been better than what we had carved out for ourselves. That sod did not want to leave!

Here is Brian taking a break next to the beginnings of the new flowerbed:

Here I am, raking out the last of the grass runners:

My beautiful Ixora bushes:


I cannot get over how gorgeous these flowers are!

The rest would have to wait until the morning...

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