Part 1: Follow the yellow brick road....

I've been singing that song all day because we started our brick walkway! On Friday, my dad and I finally managed to get to the brick store and came home with these:



220 pretty bricks all for me! We scored an awesome deal as well - they are what you call "seconds", bricks that didn't pass muster for whatever reason so they were only $0.40 a brick! That's half the price of the ones we were originally going to buy. Yay! You probably wouldn't want to build a house with these, but they work perfect for our purposes.

I was so excited, I was up at 8:00 AM this morning. On a Saturday. To lay bricks. My hubby, J, thought I was crazy and understandably stayed in bed with the dogs. But not me! My dad came over around 8:15 to drop off some tools and get me started.

Step 1 was completed 2 weekends ago which was to clear the existing sod and weeds from the area where I wanted the walkway. We ended up covering the area with landscaping fabric to ensure that no new weeds would grow while we waited to get the materials for the next step.

So I started with Step 2 this morning - removing some of the excess dirt so that our bricks would lay flush with the existing cement boundaries of the driveway & path to the front door. The dirt was somewhat loosely packed, so I used a flat shovel to shift the dirt into our wheelbarrow. Occasionally I needed to use the pointy shovel to loosen up some bits. When I was done, it looked like this:
That's my dad unscrewing a sprinkler head & capping it off. No need to water our walkway!

Step 3 was to prep the area for screeding (not sure if you can turn that noun into a verb, but I just did). First, we lay the bricks out in a row to see how many we would need for our desired path size (about 3 feet). Then we dug out a trench down the side and popped in a 2x4. This will provide a frame for our walkway as we lay the brick and is used with the screed. We only had to do this on one side of the path since we were using the flower bed border as our frame on the other side. The 2x4 was stuck in place with shims to keep it from moving.

Step 4 - the screed! This was fun. A screed is a board used to even off the surface of the dirt. It has notches cut out on either side so it can slide down the tops of the frame (in our case the 2x4 and the cement edging) and level the dirt, removing any excess and filling any hollows. Here's me screeding (yes grammar police, I did it again):


Step 5 was compacting the dirt. This was fun too. We basically just thumped around on the ground, packing the dirt with our feet.


Step 6 - BRICKS! This is the super time consuming part. Even though we screed, the uniqueness of each brick means we need to adjust the dirt underneath each one to ensure it is level on all sides as well as with our frame. We get to use super fun rubber mallets to pound the bricks into submission (ie: compact the dirt underneath). It's the perfect task for perfectionists like me. I get to use three different levels and obsess about how each individual brick is laying in relation to its neighbors. We spent about 2 hours on this part before I had to call it a day and we only got about 1/3 of the bricks laid. Here is our path as it looks now:
I think it already looks pretty amazing! After we get all the bricks laid, we'll get sand and sweep it into all the little cracks and crevices to help keep the bricks from shifting too much as we walk on them. So hopefully I'll have a finished brick walkway to share in the next few weeks (it's supposed to start raining tomorrow so I'm not sure when I'll be able to finish up). Then it will be on to the next project: more brick walkways! Haha. But now that I have the know-how I'm feeling pretty confident that the whole process will move a little more quickly.

Thanks to my dad for spending so much time teaching me today! I had a lot of fun and am super excited to have learned a new skill!

The shame....

We came home to a little note tucked in our screen door handle today. Can you guess what it said?

If your YARD gets out of control
contact Darryl at XXX.XXX.XXXX.

Guaranteed Quality Work

Landscaping Needs
Tree Trimming
Lawn Mowing
Leaf Blowing

Yeah. We get these about once a week. I'm sure they see our yard and just see dollar signs. Like that guy with the singing, dancing frog in old Warner Brothers cartoons.

Sigh.

On the plus side, this weekend we made our first big step in our yard renovation:


We planted Spanish Lavender! Madrid Purple to be exact. Ok, maybe it's not that big of a step. But at least there is something pretty in front of our house now.

I had originally planned on starting to brick a pathway in front of the flower bed leading from the driveway to the walkway. My dad, who's done some really amazing brick work at his own house, was going to take me to his brick supply place but it was closed. On a Saturday. Do they think all their customers are retired?

So instead, my mom suggested we stop by the nearby garden center to check out their greenery. BONUS - they offered a lifetime guarantee on all their plants. So, if my little black thumb winds up murdering them, I can just take 'em back (with the receipt of course) and get new ones to kill.. I mean nurture and love and grow.

You may notice that one is way bigger than the others, we only bought 3 at the garden center, then got home and realized that we really should have four. So my mom decided she'd just head out and grab another one from the drugstore nearby. There's no guarantee but I figure the odds are probably in its favor since it's bigger. Survival of the fittest and all that.

That little patch of life in front of our house makes me feel a little bit better about our yard now. So take that Gardener Darryl! We don't need your help probably. We'll get by just fine maybe.

Inspiration

About a year ago, J (my hubby) and I started looking for garden inspiration in the neighborhood. When we'd take Bullitt for a walk, we'd tote along our camera and snap pictures of things we liked in others yards. We didn't get much farther than that though, other things kept coming up, like building a new fence for the backyard, installing insulation in the attic, etc. But, now that we are finally getting started on our yard, these photos are proving to be quite useful.

Some of my favorites are below:

Don't these look like alien plants? I LOVE them.





Bullitt sitting patiently while I snap yet another picture.








Notice anything special about the photos? There's a heck of a lot of purple! Who knew? That's what I love about collecting inspiration pictures, it's a great way to step back and see the big picture. Funnily enough, we already have some wisteria growing in the far corner of the front yard next to the garage & some purple lily-like flowers growing underneath. Guess the previous owners liked purple too!

The Room Outside

When your house is less than 1000 sq ft (959 to be exact) you take your space where you can get it. And since we live in California, we can pretty much use the space outside year round.

Of course, most people who do this have at least a shred of garden knowledge. Me? Well, here's what our house looked like when we bought it in May of 2008:

Front:



Back:


So pretty and lush and green. We tried to keep it like that, honest. But we had a drought that summer. And after a few weeks of frequent watering, we couldn't live with the guilt of expending so much water. So we gave up.

In the intervening months, the backyard turned brown, as most unwatered grass does in CA in the summer, then turned to dirt (with the help of our trusty pup Bullitt and his wild laps around the yard - aka the BT500). The front held on for a bit longer, but eventually went bald as well. Then the weeds moved in and we hadn't the heart (or more accurately the energy) to evict them......

Here's what it looks like now, in April 2010:

Front:

Back:


I know what you're thinking, those can't all be weeds right? Well they are. Every. Last. One. Dandelion weeds. Foxtails. Prickly things with pretty purple flowers. Those flat weeds that look like lettuce. You name it, we got it. Weeds I can grow, actual desirable plants not so much.

We are officially the second worst yard on the block (first place being taken by a house with a lawn of discarded couches, desks and chairs - it's an outdoor room of a different sort).

But no longer! Our challenge, should we choose to accept it (and sometimes we aren't so sure) is to:

1) tame our wild beast of a front yard to enhance curb appeal and maybe start trying to aim for the second BEST yard on the block (just trying to be realistic).

and

2) create a lovely backyard haven where we can rest, relax, have dinner in the evening, and where our now two dogs can run their BT500s without creating a mini-sand storm.