Landscaping

Landscaping has been ongoing for awhile now. It's been quite a process. Lori and I've gone through a walk through with Brian, the landscaper in chief, and set out what we wanted. His bid came in way below others, and we had seen the final product with the neighbors. So far he's exceeded our expectations. We've been making quite a few trips to Lowes and Home Depot. They have quite a bunch of plants for volume discount, and even the landscapers appeared to be impressed with Lori's shopping. We picked up low water requirement plants, and for the most part deer resistant, although we have some concerns with some of the shrubs.
First thing they did was move in the equipment and then scraped off the growth. All those sunflowers had to go.



After that, a lot of things happened at once. Trees were planted, concrete walkways were poured, boulders moved around, and all kinds of holes and trenches for the drip and sprinklers system tubing.




Here's a slideshow of the rest.
Lori and I rounded up a good store of plants. Most have already been put in. We have to be careful where we leave them. If we set them on dirt anywhere in the yard, and aren't paying attention, the workers are very quick to put plant them. Hence everything gets stored on the concrete until we're sure where we want them.



Check here for some of the early results.

Unfortunately, all the digging and scraping has resulted in a few casualties. A rattlesnake had the misfortune of trying to cross the driveway with the landscapers around, and they made sure that he wouldn't bother them later. Another snake got hit by a shovel accidentally. He wasn't a dangerous one. I'd prefer to have those around to help take care of the mice. This guy got caught inside the kitchen nook. I think he crawled up the screen door and got through a handle opening.



I let him go in a grassy area. Hopefully he'll stay away till the work is done.

So after a long stretch working on the computer in the study, we all decided to finish up and take a break, then back to more work.