planter complete!
Sometimes, we find ourselves working very hard on the house with very little to show for it at the end of the day (for example, doing boring prep work, sanding wood, masking, etc. – all things that are very important but not very satisfying to complete). Other times, like this weekend, we work very hard AND there is a nice, visible reward for our labors.
It started on Friday when we got a big delivery of top soil of our first planter. It came in a big dump truck and was dropped off on our front driveway. Ben, Christina and Katherine spend 3 hours moving the soil by wheelbarrow back and forth until almost all of it had been moved and compressed into the planter. (Ryan got a free pass on this one since he was flying back from a business trip in Copenhagen at the time). It was very exhausting labor, but oh wow, what a great feeling when it was done! Finally, our backyard planter is actually a planter!
These backyard planters are Ben’s little babies . If you don’t already know, Ben is very passionate about plants and gardening, so he has been waiting almost 3 years to be able to plant something into the ground in our backyard. Very exciting! He already had the bulk of the plants he wanted to add in there, but to round it out, he also made a trip to the nursery for some additional annuals and groundcover.
You may have noticed that another bit of progress we made was that we installed another fence panel on the west side of the house. Thanks to all of Christina and Katherine’s ongoing and dedicated staining work, we are now seeing even less of the overgrown property next door to us. As you may notice, we are planning on returning the fence back across the house so we will be able to block the view into our backyard from the street. We will build one more panel that cuts across, and then we will install a locking gate against the house. Soon we will be all buttoned up on that front!
Finally, we are almost done with the masonry for the second backyard planter. Ryan finished most of the third course of bricks. Next weekend we should be able to finish this bricking, and then once Ben lines the planter with waterproofing and insulation, we’ll be able to fill it with soil and have all of the plants in the ground! So exciting!!
It’s great to know that we are more than half-way done now with all of the backyard projects. We can’t wait to relax and enjoy all of our hard work!
