Some planting is done ...

Well, we dipped our toes into some landscaping.  Richard from Designing Eden came up with a very nice design for the front of our house and delivered a bunch of mulch and plants.  From there, I dug the holes in the granite and Kim planted.  Here's a couple 'After' shots.

Robbie and Brie immediately began helping with the watering, but I'm pretty sure the plants will survive as they're all native and probably gaining critical nutrients that way.

First neighborhood party at our house August 13

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Sunday ... a day of rest!

We started early today and planted the 'no mow' grass ... no pictures yet of that as I really want to see a few sprouts  before posting.  After that, we focused on building up one of the ledge walls on our back patio.  Here you can see me pulling some granite from the quarry to the back patio.  What you missing is a shot of our pick-up replacing me as we pulled the granite up a hill.

Here's the final product ... we're really proud of this ...  but not looking forward to the morning when we're pretty sure both of us will be suffering from moving these rocks into place.

Kim and I still have a lot of projects that we want to complete before the winter sets in. Among them are  to plant some 'no mow' grass and also to test some wildflowers in the septic area that's now overgrown with weeds.  The first step for both of these was to get some topsoil, aka dirt, delivered. Here are some shots of a half a load dropped off on top of the hill with the rest dropped off at the bottom.  The wheelbarrow will be getting a workout.

Exterior staining complete ...

Over the last week or so, we had a crew come in, stain the house and paint the soffits.  One coat of stain and three coats of paint on the trim. They also installed some wire up on the beams to stop the bird  building next spring. You can see that Kim has done quite a bit of mulching and next up is some landscaping in the front of the house.

A favorite picture

And here is one of our favorite shots ... the south side of the house taken from up in the woods.

Back-filling complete .....

Lee wrapped up back-filling the foundation this week and the house looks much more balanced on the property.  He also spread some mulch, built a few walls and added some top soil.

Here is a picture of Robbie enjoying the crushed stone where the patio will be.  Notice that Lee bordered the patio area with some rocks from our quarry.

And to the left, another picture of the back patio area, but taken from up in the woods.  Kim has spent a lot of time clearing off the ledge around the house and it's really adding a lot of character.

To the right is a shot of the walk out basement area, which will eventually have a small patio about the same size as the graveled area shown.

Here you can see that the area to the right of the barn is now free of the bulldozer that was there for the winter.  It's been cleaned up with some top soil.  We kept a large supply of rocks of course ... not really much choice!

Now, looking at the barn from down on the driveway you can see that we do have some landscaping to be done. Kim just ordered a truckload of mulch, part of which will go over the dirt you see to the right of the barn. Anything to keep out weeds!

On the left side of the house in the front, Lee pushed down the large rocks that make up the retaining wall.  The drop beyond those rocks is pretty steep.

And finally, here is a picture taken as you come up the driveway.  From this angle,  you can see we're missing a tree on the front left side of the house to add balance.

And here is a view from up near the house facing down the driveway.