6 Week Yard Transformation Challenge – Week One

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Welcome to Week One of the 6 Week Yard Transformation Challenge, hosted by my friend Nat at Simple Family-Crazy Life. Nat is starting her second round of the challenge. She did her front yard in the first round.

I have to admit our yard is actually pretty nice. It just needs a little TLC. This house was built in 2014, and we just moved here in November of 2017. So this year will be our first spring and I’m SUPER EXCITED to see what comes up in the gardens.

But it does need some work. I don’t need to dig up the yard, but I do need to do a lot of maintenance. Here are the things that I hope to accomplish in the next six weeks:

Strip and Re-Stain the Fence and Planter Boxes

The fence actually looks better in this photo than it is, but as you can see there is a lot of it. This portion is in the back yard, and since it backs onto a municipal right of way, we will be staining the back side of it as well.

Ick. See all the algae on the planter boxes? yuck.

I think this might take a good chunk of my six weeks, I will probably tackle it a bit at a time. I’m a gemini so I can’t ever make my way through anything in one shot. It’s a lot of a little bit here and a little bit there.

Lawn

Our lawn needs quite a lot of attention. Big sections of it looks like this:

The yard pretty swampy in the winter, and this January we got FOUR TIMES our normal amount of rain, so there are quite a few spots where there were puddles, and now there are bald spots.

Trees

We have three little trees in the back yard, and I don’t even know if they are fruit trees or flowering trees. I think they are probably flowering but time will tell. They were just planted in the grass with no borders or dirt. I have already added some dirt, but still need to put borders around them.

Pressure Washing

We also have a 12′ x 30′ patio that needs to be pressure washed. Not to mention all the pressure washing that needs to happen before the fence can be stained 🙁

Prune and Train the Roses

The people who owned the house before us were good gardeners. And they left us 13 rose bushes. I added one that I brought with me, so now I have 14. When we got here , they were way overgrown. I have grown roses in the past, but only hybrid teas and floribundas. There are a few climbers here, so this will be new for me. But I’m looking forward to figuring them out.

Refinish the Daybed

Last year I did an outdoor daybed. I built it out on my condo deck and then I had to cut it apart to move it. Now I need to reassemble it, and change the colour to something that goes better with the house.

Identify and Label the Plants

Mostly it’s the roses that I want to inventory. But I have a whole yard full of plants, that are new to me, so the best way to figure out what to do with them, is to figure out what they are!!

Add Some Colour

I have added a little splash of colour here. I love this little bird. Maybe because I have real blue jays! Forgive the photo, these guys don’t stand still, so its tough to get them in focus.

A few other things I want to get done include:

Paint the Outside of the Shed

No guarantees that I will get all of this done, But I’ll try!! We have one of those little vinyl sheds. And it’s new and clean and pretty nice. But it’s not the same colour as the house. And yes, I am that anal about these things. So, I intend to paint it to match the house. I’ll need to pressure wash it first…Add that to the pressure washing list above!

Organize the Inside of the Shed

The inside is just open space. And since we moved we have just been jamming stuff in there. Here is what it looks like now.

Furnishings

One other thing I would love to accomplish is to deck out my patio with new furniture. But no gaurantees on this piece as I’m SUPER PICKY. And it takes me forever to make a decision about buying anything. But it is six weeks away, so it’s possible!!

So that’s the list. No promises on the patio furniture, but I’ll try to get everything else accomplished in the allotted time.

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Thanks for stopping by and see you next week.

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