New yard and house pics!

We still can't park in the garage - the yard's too squishy while the new grass is still getting watered, plus I'm sure there's still more settling that'll happen. It's hard to believe that this greening-up yard was just dirt and weeds a few weeks ago! There's still straw strung out everywhere (altho I think rather than raking it up, I'll see if the mower shreds/mulches it nicely - anyone got experience with this?), and plenty of footprints in the yard - ours, Scruffy the neighbor dog, etc...

Here's a pic from the street. Brett's folks gave us a weeping willow and a red maple the other day as yard-warming gifts. Worried about the invasive nature of weeping willows, and not really having a place to fit one in the "grand scheme" sketch (mostly mental) I have for the yard, we exchanged it for something I'm very, very, very excited about - a red bud! In the following picture, the red bud is in the forground/center of the pic, or the right-most in the bed, while the maple is to the left. I might yet move the maple - I still have hopes to put something more Christmassy here, but in the mean time, I wanted to heel them in....


Nothing's actually planted yet, so you'll see lots of perennials and shrubs in pots that need final placement and planting. I'm heading out to Mary's place in just a short while - we're going to dig up some plants she wants to split and she'll help me populate the flower beds (yay Mary!). I have plants for the central part of this front bed to be yellows and purples, and mostly stuff that can handle hot sun, dry weather, etc. Oh, and to attract butterflies.

Not sure how the shrubs are going to be finally laid out, plus there's got to be plenty of room for bulbs and some annuals.


Shot from the back steps of the yard....look how much grass there is! Across the back you can see the garden, potted plants that got moved to the back of the property for the lawn installation, bags of manure and top soil that I got 50% off, and a pile of rocks/dirt that got raked up during the lawn installation. Oh, and lots of hoses.


We still have some bald/slow sprouting spots.


A shot of our yard and across two neighbor's yards. The people two doors down just did their yard yesterday - and we saw them just using the rock hound, not bringing in extra top soil, etc. We're hoping our extra work pays off. We think we can still see weeds rooted in their lawn!?

Also in this picture you can see part of The Great Trench - er, ah, so yeah, I didn't pack the dirt down hard enough after burying the poly pipe across the yard. Need to use some of that bagged top soil here I think. Hard to believe how deep the groove is in the yard - I THOUGHT all the dirt went back in the trench!!?

And check out the trees starting to change color in the background! Fall is here...