Welcome to Our Jungle

Welcome to Our Jungle

Our backyard is embarrassing. Like, “let’s not invite anyone over, ever, because we don’t want them to see the mess of our backyard” embarrassing. We’ve been putting off any work to our yard this year because we had some bigger plans for the whole thing. And of course, like any plans we’ve ever made, things have changed. The goal now is to build a somewhat bigger deck, extending along the back of the house. Because of that, we’ve put the back stone patio on hold. But the deck builders promised that they’d take care of getting rid of all the overgrown weeds in the back. Those plans seem to be continuously delayed, which resulted in our backyard looking like an overgrown jungle.

Every time I talk to the guy building our deck, he says, “Don’t waste your energy ripping out all that stuff, we’ll take care of it.” And that’s great. I would love to have someone else do it. But every day it doesn’t get done, the weeds just get more out of control. It finally got the point where I couldn’t stand looking at it. Beyond that, we’ve started to see a lot of random cats hanging out in our backyard. We created some sort of haven for the neighborhood cats. I like cats and all, but everything was just out of control. So this morning I put on my work pants and decided to just start ripping stuff out. Professionals, eat your hearts out.

It’s funny how much you can get done if you just dedicate some time to it. I started ripping stuff out around 9 am on Sunday. Kerry was busy all day working on our headboard (teaser alert!) so this was a solo project. Man vs wild. I was the man, in that analogy. Anyway, by 1 pm, I had most of the weeds ripped out. We took a small break to have a lunch of hot dogs and corn on the cob, fueling up to finish the job in the afternoon.

Bundling up the weeds took even less time than I had expected. In fact, by 3 pm, the backyard was completely clear. Well, that’s probably a bit of an exaggeration. The backyard still needs a ton of work. But just look at it now.

At least it doesn’t look like a jungle anymore. We could get the trailer out if we needed to (and we need to, because it looks awful there). I can walk around without a machete. And it’s not a safe haven for neighborhood cats.

The question now is: What next? I’ve been reading and watching a lot of YouTube videos about installing a patio and honestly it doesn’t seem too difficult. I think I could put one in, no problem. Dig, level, gravel, compact, sand, stone, more sand. Easy, right? But even in this weed pulling process, I noticed that there are some pretty intense roots back there. Not only am I concerned about attempting to dig through those, but I don’t want to put a patio on top of them, only to have the roots damage the patio a few years down the road. I’d really like a patio back there (in addition to our new deck!) but we’ll have to see if it’s a good idea. For now, I’m just really excited that I can at least SEE all the way to the back of the yard.