So, things have taken a turn with a snowball effect.  The weather has been so nice that we decided we MUST work outside.  Remember, I was a farmer in my previous life AND I am a fake homesteader, so we must plant our crops when the weather is good.  Isn’t that “farmer talk?”  You would only know about my fake homesteading if you follow me on Facebook and Instagram.  Furthermore, what a great time to do a few before and after posts of our backyard space and talk about our future plans.

Snowball Effect

After buying our ferns for our front porch this week, things snowballed from there.

You know how that is:

You have plans to update a faucet in your bathroom.  Then you notice the sink looks pretty janky.  When you buy your new sink, you realize your countertops are from 1965.  One thing always leads to another.  (Speaking of bathrooms, if you haven’t seen our recent re-do, you must.  The before are shocking!  ????)

After finding our ginormous ferns for our front porch, we decided to purchase our flowers for our urns in the back yard.  While buying our flowers for our urns, we figured we may as well buy our plants for our vegetable gardens.  Which led to us talking about building a  pergola in the near future.

What we had to work with…

I should probably back up and show you the before pictures of our back yard.  The focal point was a giant pile of concrete in the middle of some type of “patio” area.      UM…… I don’t think so.  Or as I baby talk to Ivy, it would be TIE-TONE-TEEN-TOE.

According to several people in town, the attorney that built this house, also built 2 rental homes on the lot behind our house, which were sold off several years ago.  They also included a concrete sidewalk that led from the back door of our house, to both rental homes.  Throughout the years, someone removed  those concrete sidewalks and made a nice big pile for the owners who bought the house in December, 2015, to deal with.  Yay!

The pile may not look that big to you, but some of these pieces were 4’x4′.  HUGE!

Talking to several other people in town, they remember playing basketball on this “patio,” which certainly explains the basketball goal.  Wow…. sometimes it takes us awhile, but eventually, we get it.

Our BIG Ideas

We had BIG ideas for this space.  We LOVED the trees.   It provided some much-needed shade up by the house which would make a perfect seating area after planting and picking my “crops.”  Although, before we could start “project patio”, we needed to dispose of this big pile.

Basically, we had two choices for this pile of concrete.  We would pay someone $1.5 million to bring in their heavy equipment and haul it all away.  OR, we could use our own heavy equipment and use it elsewhere in our yard.  I believe you probably have figured out what choice we made.

“Our heavy equipment” included a pry bar, which we call a “javelin.”

A shovel to dig the dirt away from the concrete and a few boards for lifting the concrete after prying them up with said “javelin.”

A few bricks for “propping” the large concrete pieces after lifting them with the boards and “javelin.”

A large log chain that we attached to our truck to drag the GI-MUNDO pieces of concrete in the desired locations.

And a few PVC pipes to “easily roll” the larger pieces into place after prying them up with the javelin and boards and propping them up with the bricks.  (OK, you can stop laughing now at the “easily roll” part.)

Listen up, People

Being at the ripe old age of 150, I’ve realized that my mind has to be in the right place when tackling large overwhelming jobs such as this.  I can easily get overwhelmed and feel like we will never finish.  I usually start crying and talking about how bad my life sucks.  Deb usually makes up her own curse words and mumbles words like “nerve pills.”

But this was different.

This was a HUGE task and I remember thinking, “just focus on one piece at a time,” which is exactly what we did.  There MAY have been a few curse words, but I can guarantee there were no tears and no mention of nerve pills.  We did what we could, and when we were tired, we continued on the next day.   Isn’t that how every overwhelming task should be for all of us?  We get so consumed with things that aren’t progressing fast enough.  Or we feel something is too hard.  We (myself included) need to just keep focusing on one step at a time, and we will eventually get through it.

WE DID IT!

We ended up moving every single piece of concrete with our own “heavy equipment.”  We repurposed the GINORMOUS ones as “steps” into our coop, our shed, and Deb’s workshop.

And, the smaller ones were used to line our flower and vegetable gardens.  You will have to wait to see those, because I need to show you what was under those concrete pieces and what happened with those trees on the patio area.  I would love to explain my gardening method and show you what the coop looked like before it was our coop

I feel the love from all of you who are faithful readers and I pledge my love right back to you.  You can catch me on Facebook and Instagram for different pictures than you see here.

And…….BUH BYE NOW