projects

We moved into our house nearly three years ago. Bekah was four days old, and I was in Snowville, Utah, attending my Grandma Scott's funeral when Seth and his family transported all our stuff from our apartment in Iona to our current location in Coltman. So it was under these circumstances that I got a crash-course in what's it's like being a co-homeowner, a brand new stay-at-home mom, and therefore the primary yardworker on our nearly 2-acre plot. Needless to say, I was feeling good if the plentiful weeds in the lawn, flowerbeds and elsewhere were not mutating into the Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors. In other words, I didn't get a whole lot done.

Since then I've tried to take on a project or two each summer to make our yard look nicer. First it was making a vegetable garden. Then it was transforming a mound surrounded by trees from an eyesore to something more aesthetically pleasing. I have no "before" pictures, but here is the semi-finished product:

Our back mound next to the firepit.

I say "semi-finished" because the Snow on the Mountain I planted last fall hasn't yet had time to mature. But my botany-loving aunt assures me that by next summer the plants will have grown and spread to cover the entire mound.

My baby Snow on the Mountain.

This summer I'm tackling another mound, this time in the front yard. It's too steep to drive a mower on, so the grass would be about waist-height before one of us would pull out the string-trimmer and tackle the growth. So I'm transforming it into a flowerbed. So far I've sprayed the whole thing with Roundup, and I've dug up most of the outline. Next we'll till the whole thing under so we can start with a nice, clean slate.

The view of the mound from the driveway. I used the hoses to mark the outline of the future flowerbed before I started spraying everything.

The mound in relation to the house. Bekah felt the need to model her new bucket and shovel in the picture.

Another view of Bekah/the mound.