operation front door // bringing up the rear

Now just hold your horses, there was more work to be done before I absolutely had nothing left to do but paint the door. Really, when I look back on it, painting the door would have been so much easier than doing all this other work, but hey, it looks so much better now!

There were two spots that really needed tending to in the back yard. The first is what I affectionately called “the jungle.” I didn’t really know what was back in the depths of this  wild overgrown area; however, Lucy has spent many afternoons exploring in the brush doing who knows what. She even staked her claim by making her own spot of dirt where she can lay down and be the jungle guard.

Just to make sure it was known who was the jungle keeper, she made a spot on the other side, too.

There she goes over to her dirt spot, making sure everything is in line.

I had to buy gardening gloves and some pruning shears before tackling this; my bare hands had already had enough.  A few hours and 4 lawn bags later I found out what was buried in the jungle:

Turns out we have TWO trees back there! I guess I knew that, but I had forgotten, so it was a fun surprise to be reminded again. I thinned out the variegated hostas and got some new (solid green) ones from a coworker (score!). There’s also a cabbage plant mixed in there. I got it for free, and I don’t really know how to grow cabbage, so I stuck it in there as a “purple hosta” ha. We’ll see how it does.

My cute little windchime harpist found a home in the newly groomed jungle.

Whew! But I’m not done yet. Behold, my other backyard project:

No, I’m not just showing you a picture of grass. Believe it or not, there is a patio hiding under all those weeds.

I’m not going to lie, this was sort of overwhelming. I didn’t really know where to begin because I didn’t even know what the actual shape was! I just began in the middle and played archaeologist as I unearthed the patio beneath.

As I’m going through my pictures I realized I haven’t taken a more recent picture of this patio. And alas, it is now dark outside, so I won’t be able to show you a more cleaned up version of this. But I think you get the point. The dirt has since cleared away after a good rain, so the bricks look a little cleaner.

So there you have it, the back yard version of operation front door. The official checklist is almost complete.

• Weed the brick walkway and sidewalk
• Weed the side garden – aka “find the tulips”
• Plant some more flowers, “pretty it up”
• Weed and fix up the front garden
• Paint the door
• Unearth the Patio
• Weed and fix up the back garden

I have now done everything possible for putting off painting that door….

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