So far we haven't really done much in the way of landscaping since moving into this house (aside from cutting down all of the trees). But we've now been forced to fast-track the improvement of one little area alongside our new slab, under our first fence.
This is how that area looked when they had leveled the slab area ready for the footings to be poured.
Because they had an earthmover in again before the full slab was poured, we asked if they wouldn't mind scraping away the extra earth along that side under the fence, to save us from having to do it by hand.
What we were left with was not attractive, with a main feature being the remnants of an old tree stump (and its roots) that you can see in the bottom right of the photo above. When it rained shortly afterward, the entire area became a muddy, sticky, stinky mess. I really don't know why clay earth stinks so much when it's exposed, but it does. We could smell it from upstairs!
So, we decided that we were simply going to have to get our hands dirty and do something about it. I took a few trips to our local landscaping store to retrieve loads of rocks...
Which we shovelled into wheelbarrows and then tipped into the area (after we'd cleared away the excess mud and muck).
Until it started looking like this. Much much better (although you'll have to imagine the muddy mess it replaced, because I didn't manage to get a photo of it at its worse). We also took the opportunity to add an extra timber sleeper underneath the sleepers that we'd built in under our fence, since the earth on this side was now considerably lower than it was when we first built the fence. We'll have to do something about those exposed blocks of concrete around our fence posts some day.
Oh! And something else I also didn't get photos of was that we had bought some ag pipe to lay underneath all of our rocks down that side, so that when it rains that area doesn't just fill up like a giant bucket, but drains down into the front yard (and hopefully then into the stormwater drain once we sort out the front yard drainage).
It was exhausting work (and made even less pleasant by the fact that it kept raining on us), but we progressed very nicely. Until we hit the tree stump, that is.
That thing was a monster. And a monster that played hard to get, too! We tried chainsawing it...
I tried to dig away all of the dirt surrounding the stump so that we could at least get access to it.
I tried chopping it up with an axe, which strangely looks like it's upside down in this photo. Maybe it's the mattock. We tried that too.
We eventually discovered that the best way to cut away the bulk of it was for Tom to go next door and slide the chainsaw blade down through the little gap between the concrete of their driveway and our fence, and cut away the bulk of the tree stump from there. This is probably not a safe thing to do. Don't try it at home, kids.
We eventually got it looking like this. Not very attractive, but at least it's comparatively clear.
And with the magic of rocks, it looked like this!
With the minutes ticking closer to the landscaping place's 4pm closing time, we decided that we could just manage to get another load of rocks to dump in the front yard as well. Daniel whipped out the mower and cut all of the grass back as low as possible. And as you can see, the boys dismantled part of the front fence so that we could back the ute in through that gap. We just couldn't face having to wheelbarrow another entire load of rocks over, so the fence removal seemed like the easier option. It was, too!
And now this is what the front yard looks like, with that extra load of rocks dumped in there, and the front fence replaced. It's definitely not the most attractive front yard I've ever seen, but it's better than mud! Speaking of mud, I wish I'd got a photo of what we looked like by the end of the day. Drenched and covered in dirt and sweat, we were quite the sorry sight. It was a fight to get first dibs on the shower! But at least we've conquered one small area of our barren wasteland of a yard!
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