Landscaping -- Final!!

It's done!!! We're still hoping to get a bench for the backyard and to put up a fence, but otherwise everything is done!! I am quite mad at myself that I didn't take any pictures at the end of last summer when there were weeds as tall as me in the yard because those would have been the real starting pics. The only picture I found that shows anything is this picture of Brynne getting ready for her first day of school. You can see some of the weeds and the dead grass (the front yard had some grass, but it was laden with weeds; the back yard was all weeds). We had to find a strategic place to have her stand where there was enough room for me to also stand and get a picture of her without a weed in the way.

Then we spent hours and hours pulling up each and every one of those weeds before covering the ground with plastic and rocks. The rocks were to hold down the plastic since its really windy in the morning around here. I was very grateful to discover that putting down the plastic saved us $500-$700 since the landscapers didn't have to scrape up the top layer of dirt anywhere other than a little in the front (where the grass had not yet had time to completely dissolve...)

Here's a picture of the work in progress in the front yard.

And here is a completed picture. It was taken at a bad time of day, so you can't see the plants around the house very well, but you can see my new tree. They put in a white flowering crab apple and it was supposed to be pink, so they swapped it out for me. This tree is much taller and it has deep purplish-reddish blossoms.

I put in this picture so you could see the plants and flowers next to the house better.

This is the side of the house to show how the plants and flowers wrap around the porch. (The bricks piled by the stairs are to take the patio out to the fence line once we get a fence in.)

For those who don't remember, this is what the side of the house looked like before we started. The cement patio was caving in by the far window well (causing flooding problems), and the patio went more than a foot onto the neighbors property. You can also see that the stairs were becoming a safety hazard.
Here's what it looks like today.
The backyard started out looking similar to the front with plastic and rocks.

Then is started to take on a little form...

And now we have a beautiful backyard!

This is what the area immediately behind the house looks like. We have two planter boxes for vegetables and a few bushes. (The things laying on the grass are window screens -- I've been washing windows...)

This is the back corner a week ago. The rock area currently serves as a launching pad for our sand-box boat. In time, however, we are hoping to put a shed there. The area by the tree was designed to be a sitting area.

And here it is looking more like a sitting area. They got the flagstone put in along with the last few bushes. The bench will sit right in front of the tree between the bushes. As the tree grows larger, it will be a really nice shade area.

This is a picture looking at the yard from behind our property. It shows the plants on the back corner of the house (which are lilacs--yeah!).
The final picture shows the other corner of the backyard up close. I love the mixture of red bushes and golden bushes. The flowers are all daylilies that will come in various colors.