We have finally put the time necessary into the backyard to get a good start. When we originally purchased the house we were given two vouchers for the yard; one for sod and irrigation, and the othe for trees and shrubs. In theory, this would have made the project affordable and easy.. but alas, we drug our feet on the project and paid the price for it. It took us nearly a full year to determine how large and what shaped deck we wanted; and another 6 months to bid it out and have it built.
We spent the first blizzard winter with a dirt backyard, and a dog who had to be taken out front to go potty. The second year, we had only a deck and a dirt back yard, so we quarantined Two Dogs now, to the side yard which was lined with erosion matting to try to control the mud. It worked reasonably well until Hallie tore most of it up. We accomplished this much last fall. So when the yard thawed this year, we were eager to get rid of the mud pit. The sod company was here early in the spring to lay sod over the irrigation they had installed the previous fall. But when I called the tree farm to inquire about a sale sign out front they notified us that they were having a liquidation sale and would no longer honor our $2500 voucher - OUCH! This put an awful big damper in the motivation and plans. Thankfully, as fall has approached again this year, another local tree farm (mind you, one that I drive past twice a week between daycare and work, and have admired for the size and selection for quite some time) threw up a sale sign 50cent Tree Sale.. doesn't take too much more than that to draw me in. And so after several trips to scout, hours of research online, and an evaluation for their consultant...we finally have trees (and a few shrubs)!!
The next obstacle came in the planting phase.. we have extremely dense clay dirt here in Colorado; our yard is no exception. It took nearly 2 weeks to dig all of the holes. Mother nature was kind enough to dump rain the day before our scheduled delivery; making the clay even more dreadful. This is a picture of the biggest hole in the yard (5 feet x 18 inches)... full to the brim.
We were thankful, the Tree Farm allowed us to delay our delivery date. I was thankful Sam was willing to bail water... A week later, the trees arrived: 1x Sienna Glenn Maple, 1x Armstrong Maple, 1x Winterking Hawthorne, 1x Thunderchild Crabapple, 3x Swedish Aspen, 3x Robin Hill Serviceberry, 2x Quaking Aspen... 12 trees in all.
The Sienna Glenn Maple
The Quaking Aspen and Armstrong Maple
The Swedish Aspen with Serviceberry's hiding in the background.
The Winterking Hawthorne
The Serviceberry's
The Swedish Aspen again, with a few scrawny Russian Sage - should be goregous next year.
1 comment:
Adam would love to go back to Colorado. He lived there for two years and loved it.
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