Jeanette and Nathan's Stuff: The yard is done!

Clearly we have been super busy if our last post was over a year ago. Since getting our new house in November 2012 we've spent most of our time moving in and adding a backyard.

We had the patio professionally installed in March and spent just about every weekend since then doing the rest ourselves.

All the work:

Hauling 37 yards of dirt - 15 of it clay from the neighbors yard.
Hauling 40 yards of bark for the front and the back.
Hauling 4 yards of rock for drains and rock beds (by far the heaviest of all, which got moved the fastest after we got a warning from the City for leaving it in the street 1 extra day)
Irrigation for the entire yard with 4 different watering zones.
Trenching for the irrigation and drainage.
French drains throughout.
Tilling and grading of the lawn area.
Installation of the sod.
Building and planting garden boxes.
Creating decorative rock beds.
Building a pump track with continuously tested and monitored berms.
Researching, buying and planting plants for 4 different growing zones.
Researching and planting 7 trees that were just right for our long term needs. (2 Chinese Pistache, a mandarin, a lemon, a lime, and 2 crape myrtles)
Oh, and hacking through the monstrous native clay.

Nate did an amazing job doing 90% of the work. I got pregnant half way through the process and wasn't much help with anything that involved muscles. My focus was the plants, garden, and except for the last load, hauling bark.

*Our backyard is fairly big, but not as big as the wide angle lens makes it look.

The back slope has all low water plants/trees.

This is the dark side of the house with Hydrangeas, Hostas, and a Fushia.

The garden had peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, and corn. Most of that has already been ripped out to start the fall crops of lettuce and broccoli.