Landscape Improvements - Before...

Over the past three years we've watched our once lush side yard, and the upper tier of our back yard deteriorate in to a dry, dusty, barren mini dust bowl.  It had two enemies: the shade of our beautiful trees and my two precious boys who we allowed to ride their motorized John Deere tractor and gator in perpetual big circles around the playground set.  When it would rain, the dust became a muddy path that would take days to dry before the boys could play on it again.  And when it was dry, the fine dirt would make it's way between your toes even if you were wearing shoes and socks.  I kept saying year after year, "I'll sacrifice a nice yard for shade."  But it would always eat away at me.  This is how much of our upper yard looked.  Nice hey?

Our first step in our improvement plan was to lay a border around the playground set and fill it with mulch (truckloads of mulch).  It's an expansive, well-defined play area for the boys now.  And there is still plenty of room for them to ride their tractors still (on the mulch of course!).

Then A.J. spent a morning leveling the yard with a bobcat-type tractor-digger-loader-thingy, and then another day tilling the dirt.  The tilling was not easy let me tell you.  The dirt was packed so hard it was like rock and really resisted breaking up.  We were starting to see improvement though...