The Great Yard Reno

One of our must-haves on our home-hunting list was to have a great fenced-in backyard for the future Ray pups, but we compromised. Our house has a great big backyard, but it can also be referred to as, "The Woods." Ah, yes... gorgeous trees and a nice carpet of 10 years worth of leaves! (Under which is some good ol' Georgia clay.) But we fell in love with the house, and decided that the backyard could be a work-in-progress. A couple of weeks before we closed, a tornado went through our area. While we were lucky and only lost one small tree, less than a mile away, homes were severely damaged by winds and downed trees. We took a deep breath, looked at the monstrous trees right up against our house, and knew they would be taken down before our one-year home-buying anniversary.

Well, progress was made about a month ago! Andrew had several of his co-workers and some of their sons over for what I like to call "Lumberjack Saturday." He provided the big cooler of beer and his special barbeque chicken, while the guys brought their tools, muscles, and tolerance. (Luckily, it was my Ma's birthday weekend, so I had an excuse to get out of town... although I had my phone on me at all times, waiting for the call- "A tree fell into our bedroom.") Those guys got to work at 9am and by the time the sun set, they had taken down about 20 trees! I couldn't see much when I got home that night, but the next morning we were up bright and early because pure sunshine was brightening up our house! I walked outside and was absolutely blinded. We have space for a yard... a real yard where real grass can grow! We've got several long weeks ahead of us to get the wood cut up and moved out, get the stumps grinded, get the leaves up, and get some grass planted. We're saving our tax returns to put in a fence, and hopefully by fall we'll have two little Ray pups to enjoy what is sure to be a great, adventurous backyard!

Looking off of our back deck just before we moved in

Looking at the backyard from the driveway- post Lumberjack Saturday!