Blue Stone Walkways

Another day and a lot of progress was made!  These photos were taken March 28th- we were happy that the threat of snow seemed to be gone and things were moving right along!

More stone was delivered...

Progress is also being made on the stone wall that will be in front of the pavilion...

Heading down the Garden Path

As I was leaving for work the next morning, the landscapers were arriving to mark out the pathways.  A big truck was also parked on the side of the road to deliver the stone for the steps!

When I got home from work, the stone was unloaded and it was exciting to see that a lot of the gravel was in place for the pathways...

We still have the old fence up so the dog can still run free.  Soon we're going to have to start walking him on the leash until the new fence is in place.

Stumped

Day 1 of the landscapers' work... they dropped off a tractor to get the big stump out of the backyard from the tree we cut down.

We now get to move on to getting the walkways put in!

Storm Trouble

Although we were able to get the half-dead tree down before the storm arrived on March 2nd, we ran into trouble from the pine trees.

The first hit was a big limb that came down on the Well House roof.  Here's a photo from during the storm...

The roof on the building is 100 years old and slate.  Not going to be fun to get that replaced! 

Here's a photo of it from behind the Well House... you can see the pointy branch on the pine tree, where the limb broke off.

The next hit was a huge pine tree that was behind the big barn.  It sideswiped the building- luckily not a direct hit, but it did knock it off kilter.

Another storm was scheduled to be coming through (will spring ever arrive?!?), so we had to quickly get the hole in the roof covered so it doesn't mess up the recently finished gym!

We have our work cut out for us... weekends full of chopping those trees up and trying to schedule the insurance guy, roofer, and a structural engineer.  

This was not a part of our spring plans!

Clearing the Way

I've got a bit of catching up to do!
Before the landscaper could begin work, we needed to take care of a few things back there.  So, I bring you back to February...

Unfortunately, there was a tree that needed to come down.  It was rotted on one side, and we had been trying to get it healthy with trimming it over the past few years, but it was too far gone.

I was holding my breath as it came down, but Mike's gotten quite good at landing it right where he likes.  He took the rest of the afternoon to chop it up.  That will be good firewood for next year.

The forecast had a Nor'Easter coming in this week, so we really wanted to get the tree down and cleaned up- mission accomplished!

Planning the Backyard!

We have finally gotten around to doing some real work on the backyard!
We hired a landscaper to come up with a plan for us.

Our wish list included:

- Pavillion for a dining area

- Pathways and colonial style gardens

- An area in the center of the gardens for a sundial 

Below is the first draft that he came up with.  The house is on the left, the well house is on the right.  The structure in the middle would be the new pavilion.

It was a good start, and got us thinking more about how we'll use the space.  

We decided that we needed the following changes:

- Reduce the lower level patio area

- Move the pavilion a bit further away from the house (so that when you looked out the kitchen window you weren't looking right into it)

- We didn't like the stone wall coming off the back of the house

- We wanted a pathway to enter the middle of the back yard from the driveway

- Need a fence for the dog

- We wanted less of the lawn area, more gardens.  We have so much grassy area with the field, we don't need that in this section of the yard.

Some of the challenges of the space are:
- We want to keep the privacy fence (shown running along the top of the plans) but it is currently running on an angle, following the property line.  We'd like to square it off a bit to make this area of the backyard appear more symmetrical.
- The yard slopes down to the driveway.  We have to fill in some of it, but will still have to have steps in the walkway going up to the pavilion. It would be too steep to just have walkways.


Here's where we ended up for the hardscape...

And here's the latest plan that includes all of the plantings...