Our Graveyard

If you know us well, you've definitely heard John and I complain about our yard. Well, pardon my french, but "bitch" is really the only way to describe the ferocity of our complaining. It's a good size yard. Long and narrow on a lot that's 0.19 acres, which is a lot when you live in a tiny bungalow that's probably on 1/4 of it. It's got a lot of potential, which we're reminded of a lot by happy, yard-loving friends and family. But we are NOT yard people. It's too much work. John and I are computer, photo, website, making movies projects and home improvement kind of people. We definitely didn't get the gardening/yard work genes.


Here's a "Monet" shot of the yard. Looks nice from a far, but up close it's a mess. But here are the dirty details we're up against. We have a "death tree" that's about 75 feet tall and cost us over $1,000 to prune last year. We have a lot of fruit trees and a huge walnut tree that shed something year round. We have a well that doesn't work. We have a canal in the back to use for a garden we don't have. And we have mice and rats that love all of the above. We may as well be living in the country. Needless to say, we are SO in over our heads.

When we first bought the house, I was pregnant with Katie and hormones clouded my judgement; we were naive thinking the yard would be fun to fix up. But as these details present itself, we've just neglected it for 8 years. The sad thing is that the owner before us neglected it for his 8 year residence and who knows how far back it goes? I have a feeling someone hasn't touched that backyard since the 50's. Our house was built in 1925 and I know we've got a graveyard of baggage back there.

This has never been so obvious as lately. We are on an "extreme makeover: backyard edition" kick and have been doing a lot of work this last month. We've known about some of the crazy things, but have unearthed all kinds of stuff that's enough to make me move our butts into a low maintenance townhouse, pronto. These pictures don't EVEN do it justice; you can't really appreciate unless you've seen it as we go. But every story is better with pictures, so I thought I'd try to give you an idea and bring you in to the current "bane of my existence", as my dad likes to say.


There must've been a cottage back there -- or some kind of shanty town. John thinks another family lived back there during the depression. Whatever the history, we've got a steel bathtub that is IN the ground. You can't see it well in this picture, but it gives you the idea. John tried to get it out pulling by vehicle and chain, and yep, the chain broke. He tried all these different contraptions, but we're going to have to dig it out. There was a brick fireplace which we removed a few years ago, but now we're trying to haul out all these cement blocks, broken bricks and parts of broken rock walls that were around it.


This picture was when we were about 1/2 done and looks completely harmless, but it's been a huge pain. We had a ton of ground cover: a mixture of myrtle, nasty Virgina Creeper and ivy behind the garage. It was a mess and under our huge walnut tree, so the walnut shells just drop and pile up in the ground cover. John built this great shed, but the ground next to it was so ugly, we decided to clear it out. We couldn't have imagined how many walnut shells we'd find. We found about 50 original bricks from the house, two huge pipes from who knows what, a dilapidated stone and wood flower bed, more chunks or concrete and broken stone walls and another cement wall. And of course, all kinds of small things like tools, bottles, parts of torn tire, etc. I keep seriously waiting to dig up a dead body. But that's not the craziest part, all of this and inches of dirt cover an entire cement pad! There's been a freakin' patio under there the whole time! It's cracked and in terrible shape, but to find that out after 8 years blows us away.

This week I almost hit my breaking point. We were out cleaning and started painting a part of the shed we hadn't reached thanks to the mess. I wore my crocs out there. After days of working in the yard, my feet were killing me and I couldn't bear to wear my tennis shoes again. It was a completely IDIOTIC thing for me to do, because just minutes into painting, I step on an old, ghetto, rusty nail poking out of an old rotted piece of wood! It went right through my croc! Fortunately, it just scraped in between my second and third toe. It cut through the skin and hurts like hell, but it could have been a lot worse. When I saw the blood pool up in my croc, I started bawling. You would have thought I was seriously hurt. I think I was just more pissed and tired about our stupid yard. So, the next day, I went and got a tetanus shot and now, I'm dealing with a hot, itchy, red, hard spot on my upper arm and my foot is killing because I'm try to overcompensate with it instead of putting pressure on my toes. So fun!

I did suck it up and worked some more yesterday. We got a lot more cleaned up and I'm seeing the vision. Our goal is to finish cleaning up and start working on the garage. That is a huge problem too -- and a whole other post -- so I'm sure I'll over-share on that too.

Anyway, send us over your good vibes and wish us luck (and no real injuries) during this crazy project!