Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Yard Project Update 7

Everything is coming together! This week is all about the finishing touches. To get started, we put down two more yards of dirt on Monday.

On Tuesday, we planed 10 emerald green arborvitae trees along the fence line. We got 7 foot trees so that they were just taller than the fence now and they’ll grow ~6” per year until they’re back up at the height we had before. The old trees that were there really helped to hide the fact that the neighbor’s house is so close. There’s a drip irrigation line running around the trees so I set up the controller to keep them well-watered while they are adjusting to our yard.

Wednesday morning we had sod delivered all the way from Oregon. It’s a mixture of fescue and rye and it looks beautiful! Tim and I laid it all down on Wednesday night. The irrigation is a huge help again here because the sod really needs a lot of watering to recover from it’s journey. On top of that, it’s supposed to be 90+ degrees for the next 7 days. Hopefully everything stays green and healthy and puts down good roots. If that all goes well, we’ll be able to use the yard in just 2-3 weeks!

There is a seemingly endless list of small things that I can keep doing on the yard, but I’m calling it “done” once I finish building the second gate, install it, and then stain both gates. At that point we’ll have a closed back yard with everything planted. Dump runs, mulching, etc can be handled much more slowly as I have time. The next update you get on this project should be the grand finale! (At least for the back yard… the front yard starts in a couple months.)

Links to previous updates 1, 2 , 3, 4, 5 and 6