Long Weekend Project

Since this was a long weekend and the weather was great I spent a good bit of time working on my yard. The only problem here is that it’s still a nice day so instead of writing much I’m going to finish vacuuming up all the dirt I tracked in and go read outside for a while.

Edging

I re-edged the flowerbed by the fence in brick, despite the best efforts of the lilac to block me. For that matter, the lilac was the reason the old edging was coming up since the lilac was growing sprouts on both sides of it pushing it out of the way.
Fence Flowerbed Edging

I also edged both sides of the path to the gate in preparation for re-doing the path (paving stones in for spacing).
Path Edging

This is why I put in deeper edging in front of the lilac – I don’t really want it putting up sprouts everywhere. This was under the plastic that lined the bottom of the path.
Lilac Sprouts

Cats

This is Talore pretending that she’s not over in that corner so she can try to jump the 6 ft fence to the neighbor’s yard. And of course the camera focused on the pile of bricks, oh well. I never got a picture of her preparing to jump because the only reason she didn’t was that every time I saw her going for it I got up to go stop her.
Not trying to jump the fence (honest)

Talore resigned to settling down in her usual spot to eat grass since I won’t let her out of the yard.
Talore finding her spot

Dash in my spot.
The best spot around, mine

Talore kept trying to jump the fences – either one would do. At least she’s hit the end of her leash enough times that she’s very cautious about jumping when she’s got the harness on so I have time to catch her. Also, both cats were really interested when I had the gate open – they kept trying to sneak past me.

Path

The path with edging and the lower retaining stones in place:
Before

Perfect width for the weedblock fabric (in the hope that it will actually keep plants from growing in the gravel).
Weedblock fabric down

The step is in. Not perfect, but at least since it’s set with gravel it’s not likely to settle much when it rains (I hope, still waiting to confirm that).
Step Complete

Started filling in/leveling the path with gravel.
Loose Gravel

Paving stones down, they fit pretty well (lengthwise, I’d measured width as I went).
Paved

You could almost be forgiven for thinking I know what I’m doing with how well it turned out. Though now that I look at the picture closer it doesn’t look level, I may have to go back out with more gravel to fill in the right side.
Paved from the gate

I still need to clean up around the path so I can finish the edges of it – the flowerbed by the fence will be shortened at some point, then I’ll put in a landscaping stone to keep the path edged in and to support the retaining edge of that flowerbed. I also need to figure out what I’m doing with the big flowerbed. I’m tempted to cut it off as far as I edged it since there’s so much gravel in that edge of it, but that’ll be another weekend.