Fixing the Side Yard

A couple weeks ago we had an excavator come loosen up the compacted dirt in the driveway along the grass.  We wanted to put in railroad ties all along the driveway to deliniate the driveway from the grass.  After Travis spent alot of time pounding away at it with a pickaxe and only getting one railroad tie in (plus getting a few blisters), we decided we had better hire this out.

So Byron the Excavator came over and for $60 he had the driveway torn up deep enough to put in the ties.  That could have been the best $60 we ever spent!

We decided to keep the ties parallel to the house (the house and the garage are not paralell to each other).  The string marked the line and it was pretty easy to lay the ties (easy for me because Travis just told me what to do to help!)

After laying the ties, we backfilled them, then took away all the excess dirt inside the planting area.  Then, we got it smooth, planted grass seed, laid out a cow manure mixture, then put on peat moss and straw for extra insulation and moisture retention.

And this is how the ties look now.  I like how they turned out.  (As a sidenote: this picture was taken a couple of weeks ago, and now the grass is starting to grow!  We weren't sure if it would grow with the freezing nightly temperatures, but it is finally growing!)

Our little bike-helper-expert-in-residence.

It's neat to see the transformation from this Spring, to Summer to now.  I'll try to dig up the picture of when we bought the house to show the full change.  I'm happy with how it turned out.  Next Summer the grass will be grown up to the ties and it will look even better.