Progress report (somewhat redundant)

Here's a better look at the before and after of the yard. The "before" is from September 2011, the "after" from May 2012. It still has a long way to go, but it's starting to emerge. The current goal is just to get a visible, mostly grass filled lawn with beds along the fences. Once that's finished I can worry about perennials, edging, and so forth.





Photos are in two columns here, left column is old yard, right column is new yard.





In the process of going through the overgrowth, I've found quite a few established plants hidden in various places, some of which had clearly spread themselves from their original locations (irises, daylilies, butterfly bush?, daisies, periwinkle, lemon balm, mint, hot pepper bush, daffodils, crocuses, several rose varieties...). So far, I've also dug up around 50 bricks, which will hopefully become a small patio on which the firepit can live for the moment. Sometime in the future, the patio can expand and accomodate furniture, too. All of which necessitates my tearing up a mediocre patch of grass, leveling, laying bricks, tamping, filling... hopefully with a really cool pattern.

The left side still needs a lot of work, but at least there's some yard on the right side now. There's a grape vine over the bed in the back that I'd like to train up to replace some of the mulberry that's sneaking up the fence back there. And last week I took out the spare wild rose bush that was crowding the raspberries. Oh and one neighbor put up a nice privacy fence, too, so that looks better than the chain-link and provides well, privacy.