The adventure of trying to make a house a home that we built for our family of six plus some craft, home décor, recipes & any family fun we might have.

Monday 4 February 2013

Landscaping Part Two - Soil.

So the boy's are back on site today after the Christmas/New Year break and it's all systems go. We had a quick meeting with Barry to talk through the next stage of the job. He also explained when the various delivers would be happening. I've come to the realisation that things will be getting very busy around here during the next few days so I'm going to be taking the children out most days. One thing I've discovered since we started the landscaping is that we have a very dusty yard. I have dust all over the place and no amount of dusting helps. I'm just going to wait until the job's finished and then I'll do a major clean up.

So the deliveries arrived and can you believe it, its more dirt. We have had a small amount of fill delivered (this is just to build up the area's around the house that aren't the same as other places) and the bulk of the delivery was soil. This will be spread out evenly over the entire yard in preparation for the grass to be laid and the tree's to be planted. The boys had to move the fill and soil to the back of the house and when this was done we had about five separate piles just outside our windows.

Mackenna had a pile of fill right in front of her bedroom window so she wasn't even able to open her window at night time due to the possible dust factor. The other piles of soil were right in front of the windows to our dinning room. I arrived home not long after the last delivery and I thought that a heap of cow manure had been delivered because it smelt really bad. Barry assured me that it was just the smell of really fresh soil, apparently fresh soil has a strong odour. Lucky us we had the joy of spending thirty minutes getting use to the smell. What was surprising, when Mr Opoes arrived home his first commented related to the amount of soil sitting in the backyard. He didn't pick up on the smell until much later in the evening.

The children have enjoyed seeing things change in and around the yard. Everyday we are getting closer and closer to having a grassed area for them to play on. One thing that I've come to realise is that Mr Opoes and I would never have been able to have pulled this landscaping job off ourselves. I think that if we'd gotten some help from a few family members and tried to do it over Christmas, I'm sure we would have gotten the retaining wall built. Once the wall was completed, Mr Opoes and I would have spent many weekends each months trying to complete the job. Mr Opoes and I were pretty sure that we still won't have finished it by the end of July. One thing I really didn't want to do was to work through the summer, especially as the temperatures that we'd already experienced were quiet high. Mix in the humidity and I would have not been able to Mr Opoes at all. So with all those negative aspects I'm glad that we employed Barry and his boy's to do it for us.

So I thought that I'd share a few progress pictures with you.

Before: the driveway and our street appeal.

The soil that arrived today.

More soil and in the back corner that's going
 to be my vegetables patch.

Looking out towards the street from the lounge room

Next week I'll share more of the progress pictures. With more things in place you'll be able to get a better idea of how we've used the area to best suit the needs of our family. When its all finished I'm hoping the kids  can have hours of fun running around while I'll also have the opportunity to develop a vegetable garden and maybe a chicken coop.

Tomorrow I'm going to show you a meal that I created in the hope of having the kids to eat more vegetables while also trying an Asian inspired meal. So I'll see you tomorrow for another Try Something New Tuesday.

Megan

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