Today starts a huge project in The Non-Consumer backyard — putting in a brick patio, long retaining wall, (inspiration above) shade garden and path.
It’s kind of a big project.
We bought our house 12 years ago, partly because it had a nice big backyard. We’ve pretty much done nothing to it through the years besides put in a mammoth play structure, and a wall of arborvitae to block the neighbor’s viscious pit bulls. The dogs left last year, so it’s time to get busy.
My little sister Sara, who at the tender age of 24 is a landscaping goddess has agreed to take on the project. (And is even knocking $5 off her normal hourly wage as a “family discount.”) Her boyfriend, Chente will do her bidding.
She understood what I meant when I explained the goal as “hippie ethics, without a hippie look.”
We’ll be using free, found and re-purposed materials as much as possible.
I already have ginormous stacks of used bricks that I’ve been amassing over the past decade.
We spent last night poring over craigslist to see what kind of stuff was out there. There were lots of tempting listings, although most of it was kind of far away, and I would prefer to not drive too much.
I am over-the-moon that this long awaited project is finally getting started. I can’t wait until I can start having people over for lovely garden parties.
Long flowy dresses will be a must for the ladies, as long as they’re from Goodwill.
Katy Wolk-Stanley
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.”
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Hello! I love your blog, and think it’s great what you’re doing. I also just wanted to let you know, even though we’re probably too far away down in Roseburg, that we’ve got a TON of old broken up pieces of concrete (circa 1941) that we took out of our front yard. I was thinking about using it to make some sort of retaining wall myself, but I doubt that I’ll ever get around to doing that, so I thought I’d offer it to someone else 🙂
Wow – this looks like fun (and a lot of work). I can’t wait to see how it turns out.