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Since Ruth and I were/are spending more time away from home and are unfortunately getting a little older we decided to try and make the yard less maintenance intensive. So the whole place got covered in 6 mil black plastic with 20 cubic yards of larger and smaller gravel and 8 cubic yards of sand on top of that. Also a hundred bags or so of bark and cedar mulch and a lot of pavers and other decorative block. A couple new shrubs and some new flowers. It was a lot of work for the two of us and we did it without any outside help.
We were lucky though to have the use of a friend's tractor, thanks Shawn. We could move most of the rock and sand close to where it was needed with the tractor but still had to spread it all by hand. That is over 75,000 lbs of material that we moved around. It took over a month and was a lot of work in temps over 90 but we are very happy with it at this point.
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Entering the yard from the parking area with the greenhouse that heats the shop to the right.
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The patio area with the concrete off the end of the house being the existing patio and the concrete to the left of there and off into the distance being new concrete.
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Looking back towards the front gate with the new pad to the right and the existing pad to the left.
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The concrete pad was formed and then poured in two pours. The first one was to the right and went from the existing pad along the front of the sunroom. That was one day. A few days later the 3 sections that comprise the rest of the photo where poured. I formed the area for the pour and Shawn and his brother Alex helped with the pour and the finish work. We couldn't get a large concrete truck into the yard, so I ordered concrete from a guy that can bring about 1 1/2 yards at a time in a trailer-type mixer. It took 4 yds total.
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The walkway to the right goes to either around the west side of the house or off to the left towards the side street and grocery store.
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This small bridge spans a drainage for runoff from the commercial building we own. The area with the curved pavers is where we put our above ground pool normally.
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Another view of the west pathway and the flower beds there.
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The path branches at the globe willow and by the older bench that was an inheritance and heads off to ....
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... the north towards the Dollar Store.
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There is another bench further down that came from my parents also with a couple of new shrubs to the right and a peach tree that is some really bad soil and then 2 Russian Olive trees and finally a Globe Willow that is also in bad soil.
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The walkway continues on around the north side of the house where there is too much car junk stored.
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With the car junk to our backs we start back on the path...
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... the the bench and trees to the west until we arrive back at the....
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... Globe Willow that is in good soil and on down the path ...
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... towards the side street and grocery store taking a minute to look back...
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.. at the front of the house. Further down the path we can see...
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... a camp trailer that is used now for storage and beyond it and to the left were our sailboat will be stored. Turning to the left....
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... we can see the area where the above ground pool should be sitting.
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Now we are down at the street end of the property and the sailboat will be stored in the foreground area of this picture. There is a producing, when they don't freeze, peach tree to the left bye the small storage shed used for the now not needed lawn mower and garden tiller. Off to the right are some nice Russian Olive trees that I planted when I built the store, which is now leased out to Sterling the Chiropractor.
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The new graveled walkway along the side of the store with a producing peach tree to the left with two apple trees ...
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... just past it. The path drops down and goes around the pool, when it is there, and on to the house. This is the way to and from the grocery store that is very handy for us.
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There is all so gravel that follows along the back side of the store building to the right and an area with 2 pear trees to the left of that. There is a third pear tree off in the distance to the right of one of the lilac bushes.
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Another view of the pool area.
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And a final view back at the sunroom on the south side of the house with the
third pear tree blocking some of that view. The place seems totally different to us with the new yard!
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