landscape my backyard

After going round and round with a few different gardeners/landscapers (and being shocked by the prices)... as well as being inspired by the great pools/jacuzzi we enjoyed on vacation in Hawaii, we decided to put in a custom pool. We started on April 15th, and after a few delays, it should be done sometime in July. It’s been a long expensive process, but at the end of the day, it will go a long way in letting us enjoy the full potential of our home.

Here’s a picture of the progress so far…

The gardener did not show up as scheduled yesterday to do the work and his cell phone has been “disconnected.” We put a stop payment on the (relatively small) check we gave him. Interesting, because he’s talked to us several times, and has done work in the development.

It goes to show you that if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Made some progress here (and yes, a year has gone by with nothing but dirty in the back yard). Rather than getting a pool, we’ve decided to put in the back sprinkler system, put some slabs of concrete down, put grass down in the immediate backyard, and put either wood chips or rocks on the sides of the house.

A gardener gave us a rough estimate yesterday and is willing to do the work step by step….so I decided to take him up on his offer. It minimizes my risk (by paying him over time), and gets us a functional backyard in the span of a couple of months. We’ll get some outdoor furniture, and be ready for the Spring BBQ season!

My wife and a were scoping out “backyard sails” for some cool shading, but I think a couple of large umbrellas will be sufficient for this season.

Our back yard has become the BBQ’s home…and on one occasion, my son played T-ball back there. Luckily, there is a huge park right behind us.

It’s definitely the time of year in the Valley to do something. A few folks on the block have done major patio expansions (designed to eventually be an extension to the house). One or two have actually done some landscaping (concrete, wood chips, grass, and some patio furniture). Almost the entire block has gone nuts with the Christmas Decorations (the front yards on these new houses came pre-landscaped). We’re lucky to have gotten our tree up last week…. We finally have furniture in nearly every room (guest bedroom is really sparse, but it doubles a Lego command central for my son).

I’d like to get a reef covered with lights to put in the windows above the front door…. but that would look minuscule compared to the theme park style lights in the houses around us. One even has a train, a nutcracker, and a bunch of animatronic stuff going on. We’re so lame.

We came back from a weekend away and my son started asking us about who was baby Jesus, Mary, and the three kings….having lived in Australia for most of his life, where Christmas was a day at the beach and a cold prawn buffet, the traditional Christian Christmas values were foreign to him until now (took him a couple of years to let anything other than gifts, Santa, the Polar Express, and big meals sink in as the meaning of Christmas).

I fear that if we don’t get grass in the backyard soon, it will be another year before anything gets done….but getting grass means putting in the irrigation system, etc. Once April/May rolls around, it’s hard to get much done in the desert heat.

I’ve got to get crackin on this one.