tale, n. A narrative of real or imaginary events; a story. fable, n. An entertaining and often oral account of a real or fictitious occurrence. Turkey Tales and Frog Fablesn. A narrative of travels and events, mostly real and sometimes entertaining, of the Turkey and the Frog.
It has been a long, drawn out planning process, but the landscaping makeover of the backyard and south side yard has finally begun.
The yard needs help. We took the spa down several years ago and began thinking about eventual ways to upgrade the yard, which no longer could support grass due to the shade. The birds really love the overgrown bushes, but for us not so much. The bushes are taking over large expanses of the yard. It is not too bad when viewed from the yard side,
The patio as seen from the spa area. Note the partially buried concrete footers in the foreground leftover after removing the spa gazebo.
but from the patio and house, the Chinese holly seem to be taking over the world.
The Chinese holly are trying to take over the patio.
That is just the back yard. In the side yard the "dwarf" Burford hollies, despite frequent trimming, totally block Gwen's bedroom window.
These Burford hollies have had lots of trimming (note the open space underneath), but that just seems to invigorate their growth skyward. Believe it or not, there is a window in there somewhere.
That doesn't address the fact that the fence is in need of immediate attention.
The hollies and the wedged in 2x4's are holding up what is left of the fence.
So what do we want in a "new" yard? We want it to be bird friendly, low maintenance, and at least somewhat more open. We will likely keep the ligustrum, therefore it will still be shady. Flowers to attract butterflies and hummingbirds would be great, if such things grow in the shade. Finally, we also want to accommodate a vegetable garden in the side yard, if possible.
Starting in the spring we tried to hook up with several different landscaping designers with no luck. They wouldn't even return our calls. I think they thought this was too small a project. We finally found the current people, StoneCrete in Flower Mound and Argyle. We originally contacted them in August and have since had several meetings. The owner, who also did all of the design work, is more detail oriented than we are...yes, it is possible! That has made for a good match.
We all agreed on a final plan (at least for the back and side yard) at the end of October and we gave them the go ahead to start.
Part of the final (10-30-15) plan showing the backyard and side yard. The front yard is for sometime in the future, if at all.
Legend 1
Legend 2
First up--locating buried wires and pipes. We anticipated that locating the various buried items in the yard could take up to a week. The locator company found the many buried Verizon lines (phone/internet cable) and the electric line. They also marked the sewer line in the front yard. However, they could not find the gas line since it did not have the "required" wire running on and along the pipe. (On November 17, additional locator personnel finally found the gas line and an unknown, at least to us, line from the neighbor's house across our front yard to our gas line.)
Orange lines are Verizon. Red flags mark the electric cable.
We also flagged some of the buried items in the backyard.
Green flags, nine concrete footers; blue flags, water hoses and air lines between spa pump and spa; white flags, sprinkler lines, orange flags, electrical cable. These are all abandoned, but may make working in the dirt interesting.
Work begins--11/13/15. A crew of five and their supervisor arrived on November 13 to trim the yaupon hollies in the front and on the north side and to begin the demo work in the back and on the south side.
The power saw on a long handle made yaupon trimming faster than when we do it ourselves.
They jumped right in and got to work.
The Chinese holly begins to disappear.
Despite cutting and mashing everything down, it took two very full loads of this large trailer to haul off everything they cut today.
One of the nine concrete footers for the spa deck. These were made by the Frog---made to last!!
Without the support holly, the fence was quickly history.
The plastic edging took a lot of effort to remove.
No turning back now. We were impressed by how much the crew got done before dark. However, the current look is that of a moonscape or, as pointed out by the Frog, no man's land between the trenches in WWI. Whatever the current look, it is clear there is no turning back now.
Most of the wild life and the cat are in shock, but the squirrel (see foreground) was still able to find the water bowl.
The entire day, at least in the backyard, in less than 3 minutes. Here is a time lapse of still images taken every 10 seconds from 10:34 am to 5:48 pm with my GoPro Hero 4 Silver and played back at 50% of the default rate.
