11/01/2024
Who doesn’t love a surprise project?
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What you see is the after, before, and during of our Old Town Home’s backyard. Just 15’ wide and about 35’ long, it’s always had potential but our big tree’s roots discouraged our investment as we knew it would simply cause an issue.
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We’ve known the big maple tree in our yard was beginning to fade. Fewer leaves, dropping branches, and recently, peeling bark with black beneath. We’d care for it, fertilized it, and hoped there were a few years left before we’d ultimately lose it. This summer, after dropping a significant limb earlier in the year, we sought the advice of several arborists. They all reported the same. Our 80-100 year old tree had simply reached the end of its life.
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With 💔💔, rather than risk a situation where it caused significant damage, we opted to have this beautiful tree that helped us choose our home in 2003 taken out. What sprung from that decision was a whirlwind project that has spanned the last two months.
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Atypical of our DIY tendency, we hired out major pieces of this project. Tree removal, stump grinding, new wall rendering, laying the flagstone, and planting the new trees were all handled by contractors. We still killed ourselves on various parts of the project, like splitting and removing the wood from the tree for firewood, salvaging the bricks, doing a fair amount of demo, planning and preparing all of the conduit and pipes for drip irrigation, and footers for an eventual pergola.
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Though our yard may not be in its final form, we completed our efforts just in time for our Halloween party. There’s really nothing like a party to encourage you to get stuff done. We have a good amount of accessorizing to go, a pergola to build, a new round teak dining table and chairs to acquire, and some potted planting decisions to make, but we sure love how it’s turning out. Really, this has not been a bad way to spend the last few months.
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And that last photo with , that’s the first photo we have of our backyard in early 2003.
