Huge landscaping post. Lots of before and after pics.

FIRE PIT BEFORE AND AFTERS

This is the before pic. of my fire pit area

Fire pit after

 

fire pit after pic from a different angle

FOUNDATION BEDS BEFORE AND AFTERS

This is the foundation bed in the front of my house

Front foundation bed after

Side view of the front planting bed

front side foundation bed after

 

back foundation bed after

side foundation bed after

more side and back planting bed afters

FRONT ENTRY

front entry

MORE BACKYARD PLANTING BEDS

backyard planting bedanother view of a backyard bed

 BACK DECK

back deck

MORE FLAGSTONE PATHWAY BEFORE AND AFTERS

This is the site for a stepping stone path.

stepping stone path after

Cross scupture before picture. This shows the area before any flagstone or boulders were placed.

cross and pathway after

 VARIOUS

Before picture of a special area in front yard

special front area after

woodland forest area and path before. This was all lawn a couple days ago. There will be a flagstone path and plantings added to make a nice area under the forest canopy

PROJECT IN PROGRESS:  THE DECK!

Here is my truck full of the plantings that will go in pots on my deck. I am working getting the deck to be an extension of my little landscaping kingdom

Warning: Beautiful wife does guest post. A day in the life of Jason

Many of you have asked me how I get so much done in so little time.  Well, I just go for it I guess.  Here is a post that my wife put up on her blog.

Here he is spraying weeds after his 35 mile long run

Wake up at 4 (on day off), go to work and open gate for workers, run 35 miles, come home, mow lawn, spray all emerging weeds, eat lunch with Audrey, go to Costco, visit with family, eat pizza, watch a movie, go to sleep. Wow! Where does he get his energy? This week he worked on the fire pit (you know, in his down time from his 60-70 hour work week). He built the retaining wall surrounding it and the fire pit itself. It is really turning out beautifully. He is currently halfway through placing flagstone pieces around the fire pit. I look forward to sitting around a fire with friends and family on a beautiful summer night eating smores and talking.

Leyland cypress and fire maples.

Here I am near a new fire maple and younger leyland cyprees.

To the left is a newly planted fire maple and the evergreen tree to the right is a leyland cypress.  Both of these trees are the back property line.   The man that owns the ground behind me has around 20 acres there and says that he will never sell it.  I don’t believe that so I have planted some screening trees that will block any new construction from destroying my privacy in the future.  By the time that people do build on that property the trees will have grown much larger to form a beautiful and natural barrier.  I am actually going to dig up the 4-6 leyland cypress trees and move them about 8 feet away from the property line.  Right now they are dead on the line.  Not sure why the previous owners would plant them they but that is not the location that the design calls for.  So I will move them a little bit.  Below is a picture of the property line in my back yard.

This show the property behind my house. You can also see some of the trees that I planted that will screen out future building

Three random pics of my landscaping. New angles in landscaping

This is a different angle towards my back deck from the future home of one of the flagstone stepping stone pathways.

If you were to take a walk around this planting island in the back yard on my future pathway, this is the exact view that you would have.  Ahhhhhh.  Imagine the wonderful summer months and little kiddos playing around the deck.

Just a slightly different angle of the screening bed in the front side yard.

This different angle just shows a little more front lawn.  You can also see some of the other plantings that are in the bed.  From closest to furthest I have: Hogan Western Red Cedar Trees, Vine Maple, Two Huge Summit Ash Trees, another Vine Maple, a very large Vibernum, and finally a decorative plum.  There will be many added shrubs to this bed but that is for a later date.  Maybe the fall.

Here is a picture of the vine maples that I have been planting.

I have planted 6 vine maples so far and have one more to put in.  The last one will go about 12 feet away from this one.  These are beautiful trees when they grow up.  Sometimes the branches will get low to the ground and grow parellel with it.  I have some very mature vine maples in my yard that have done this and they are spectacular.

The successful compromise: Fire pit heaven

Well everyone, I finish the dang fire pit.  My wife AND I both like the new look.  It is 4 feet wide inside diameter and I leveled out all of the boulders to my wife’s liking.  I am so happy with it and thanks for all of your encouragement regarding it.  I don’t have finished product pics because it got dark but I have in process pics.  So here you go.

Big weight loss journey success.

Skinny guy with the fat mind

I finally got to run again last night.  It felt so good.  I did 6 miles with three hill at 5K pace.  It was kind of a combination of Wednesdays and Thursdays workouts.  I did not want to push it to hard yesterday because of my foot but the foot felt fine for the whole run.  It also felt fine after the run all night but I do feel it a little this morning.  Not injury like but just feel that I have a foot.  Normally you don’t notice that you have a foot, it is just there.  Well, today I feel that I have a foot.  So the run went great, I lifted my spirits a lot, and I ended up doing it at around an 8:40 pace.

My eating was also very very good.  I woke up late yesterday so I did not have time to prepare my normal daily work food.  I just through my “healthy fast foods” into a bag an took off.  The good thing is that this left me with 20 points for my dinner.  I ate 15 points in the evening so that put me at consuming my 35 maintenance points for the day.  I did not touch my weeklies or my AP’s.  I was happy with that.  I earned 6 points on my run so it did not necessitate that I eat any of my AP’s (I only force myself to eat AP’s when I get 8 or more in one day.

Before my run, I went to the rock place and hand picked some rock.  I got 6 small boulders (300 pounds) to finish the fire pit and an 8 pound piece of ledge stone that is of the same sort that my flagstone path is made of.  This will be a base for the step to my cross sculpture.  It is a piece of stone.  It has lots of lichen on it and lots of colors.  If I don’t have to work tomorrow I will be getting my fire pit, patio, and cross sculpture are finished this weekend.  If all goes well with my wife. HAHAHA

Blah!

I don’t have to much to say today.  Just not feeling bloggy.  I did pretty good last night on weight watchers.  I stuck to my points just fine.  I felt full and satisfied.  I ate two homemade burritos, veggies, and popcorn.   It was actually a lot of food.

I skipped running because of my foot/ankle.  It was the best thing for it as it is on the edge of being all the way better.  One more day helped it a lot I am sure and today it is feeling pretty much 100%.  I will do my 6 miles tonight after work.

I also dug up the fire pit.  I really don’t know what I am going to do with it now.  My wife wants it to be a totally different way than I want it.  Her way is very difficult and time consuming and I might have to hire someone to do it.  My way is more nature/camp site like which is my goal for the area in general.  She just doesn’t like it.  I am totally confused at this point and want to just say F it.

Landscaping psychadelics. Progress pics of the fire pit area.

I have made some progress in the fire pit area.  I am very happy to say that the giant stone table was moved yesterday.  I got home and I ran over to the fire pit area like a little kid to see what had happened while I was gone at work.  Ahhh yeah!!  The table was in it’s new location.  I don’t know how they moved it but I am sure glad I wasn’t there.  That sucker was heavy.  So here are the  progress pics of the area.

This is the before pic. of my fire pit area

This is the result of our failed effort to move the table without a machine

You can see the stone table is now on the right. Wooo hooo!

This a horrible pic, but my camera ran out of batteries. I finished the stone wall and fire pit patio excavation at 9 pm last night.

Pretty good weekend.

This weekend was completely full of anxiety and stress for me.  I was depressed for most of it but it still was a pretty good weekend.  I did pretty good with my food and I exercised a whole lot.  I worked for 9 hours in the yard on Saturday and got a ton of landscaping finished.  I also ran 18 miles yesterday.  That run went really well except my foot/ankle is hurting a lot now and even more right after the run.  I will be taking it easy today and tomorrow.  I hope that this will be enough time to get my foot well.  I have two huge weeks of running coming up before I slow it down for my race on May 2nd.  I will post my running schedule in the morning.

Overall I feel pretty healthy and strong.  Oh yeah, the stone company fixed their machine and they are going to move my stone table today hopefully.  If they do, you will get to see the after pics of my fire pit area.  I can’t wait for you all to see them.  I am soooo exited about this part of my landscaping journey.

Landscaping before and after pics. Planting bed design.

Well, the stone company who was going to come and move my stone table had a break down on their forklift thing.  They did not come and move the table so I could not build the patio or the fire pit.  I was very very disappointed with this.  I still had a lot to do though.  I had a friend come and help me yesterday.  That was nice and a lot got down.  One of the things we did was design the planting bed on part of my driveway.  I transplanted and moved a couple of plants around, removed sod with a pick (no sod cutter this time), and mulch the area.  It was pretty darn hard.  I also tried to remove the basketball hoop but the person installed it into about a 2 foot by 4 foot pillar of concrete and we just could not move it.  Anyhoo, here are the before and after pictures of the planting bed.  In the future, there is going to be a small concrete paver pad in the middle of this bed.  That work and those pictures will came some time later.  It is hard to see the plants but the change in the bed is dramatic.  By the way, I am very sore from the work today.  It is a lot of work to removed sod with a pic but it is easier than using a shovel. All in all, I burned around 400-500 calories on this part of the days landscaping work.

Before I removed the sod for the planting bed

 

THis is a before shot of a planting bed prior to sod removal

 

This is an after picture of the planting bed

 

This is the after picture

Back yard firepit for my landscape. Natural stone work.

This is the before pic. of my fire pit area

This fire pit grounds is the area I am most excited about in my entire landscaping adventure.  The stone table that I mentioned before is sitting right where the fire pit will be.  I have already built the flagstone pathway to and from the area.  The fire pit will be surrounded by a patio that I will lay down using the same flagstone as I did for all of my paths.  The table is going to be semi-backed up to the small pump house to the right.  Rather than a table to sit at, it is going to be more of a table to set your smore’s ingredients on. HAHAHA.  I plan to put three or so Adirondack chairs and two large natural stones to sit on for those who want to enjoy the fire pit and patio.  The view from this area looks out over the entire back yard, deck off the back of the house,  and also directly toward my future CROSS SCULPTURE.  It was all planned based on the view of the people at the fire pit.  The plantings will enclose the area to make if have a “forest campground” feel to it. 

I am getting the table moved this week and I hope to have the whole patio and fire pit finished by the end of next week.  I will post the after pictures when I am done.

A little late, but worth the read/look!

 This pic was taken last summer when I started my landscaping project.  As I have said before, I removed enough lawn to reduce my mowing time by 1.5 hours.  The pic below was taken after I used a sod cutter to remove the lawn and then I rolled it up.  After that, I had to load a tractor with the rolls and move it to another giant heep of landscape refuse.  I was all happy about removing the sod but once I got it to this point I got serverely over taken with anxiety because the job was just to huge.  I did it though.  The picture below is the former view of the screening bed on the property line between me and my neighboor.  Removing the sod gave the lawn and bed a very nice informal flowing shape.  By the way, those rolls weigh around 60 lbs each.  It took me about a week to remove all the rolls from all the sod that I cut.  This picture shows only about half of the sod that I removed but it is a great demonstration of the vast amount of rolled sod.

 So below is the pic I put up the other day.  This was taken from pretty much the same view point as the above pic.  What a difference it made.  Along with the beautiful trees I will plant several Osier Willows, Red and Yellow twig dogwoods, and lost of Spireas.  I will leave most of the shrub plantings to wait until fall because I have no way to easily water this area at the moment.  It is to far from the house to water by hand.  The trees will be fine but the shrubs would need more careful watering.

 

10 ft. cedars are now planted.

The re-birth of my landscaping obsession! Hardscape, planting beds, and design oh my!!

This is my back lawn with additional flagstone paths that I built coming off the deck and through the trees on the right.

As many of you may have noticed, I have been blogging about my landscaping efforts.  I have a love-hate relationship with my yard.  I have been living in my home now for almost one year.  Since in my mind the landscape is an extension of myself and the interior living spaces, I made sure that the home that we purchased had magnificent potential in this area.  I even started getting the landscape design done prior to moving in.  The winter is passing by now and my desire to be outside working on my yard is growing at a fast clip.

I know that for this blog, landscaping is off-topic.  I have considered creating another blog specifically for my landscaping pics and improvements.  I have decided not to do this because having one blog takes more time than I would have ever imagined and I don’t want to take up precious mind space with another blog.

So fortunately or maybe unfortunately, I am going to be posting my landscaping efforts on Run4change.  Inspired by my wonderful blogging friend Angela, I have realized that life improvement is a complicated web that works it’s way into all areas of life.  So landscaping is for me.  It is an area that I improve my peace, improve my sense of accomplishment, and improve the overall access to the beauty of life.  I am not changing directions with this blog at all, I am just letting you all know that I will be doing additional postings on landscaping.  I hope that you all enjoy them as they are just an extension of the guy who lost 130 lbs.  I never worked in the yard for even one minute a week prior to losing weight so this is a huge victory for me.  I am using the weight loss benefits in a practical way to improve my surroundings.

Here is what I plan to do in my yard this spring/summer:

• Finish planting the last three new trees and re-planting a couple that I need to transplant.
• Move a 1500 pound stone table just ten feet away from its current location (This magnificent table came with the home)
• Finish the flagstone patio and fire pit (This will go where the stone table currently resides.  The link is a pic of what I might want)
• Finish around 300 more feet of stepping stone pathways.
• Begin establishing planting around my home in the foundation beds
• Improve the drainage of my lawn to get ready for yet another rainy season
• Improve the irrigation system and allow it to cover all new planting beds.
• Make all trees not needed for my plan to give them away for free to people who need them for their own plans
• Build my cross sculpture in the back yard and design a nice seating area next to it.

That is all I can think of right now.  I am sure there is more but I am also sure that I won’t even get all of the items above done.  That will be ok with me since I am considering this a long term plan.  If I just keep at it, like with weight loss and ultras and marathons, I will get to the finish line.  At that time and place, my thankful heart will abound with joy.

Big ‘ol trees planted. Moving on to next phase.

10 ft. cedars are now planted.

Ok, I just saw this picture on my wifes blog.  She is so awesome a taking outdoor pictures.  I knew she took them and I had planned to steal them from her but I did not know that she blogged about the yard yet this week.  So I used my high tech theivery to get it on my blog.  I am always jealous of her blog because I think it is sooo cool.

Anyway, the trees are in.  This if four out of the six that I planted as a privacy screen.  The flower bed that they are in will container other shrubs that will be around 6 ft. wide by 6 ft. tall mature hieght.  This will add more screening yet not overwhelm the yard with trees and shade.  The planting bed itself is about 200 feet long so it will take a lot of calorie burning work to fill it.

I have three trees to plant and they will be here by Wednesday.  I also have a couple of trees that I must dig up and move to other locations to make it all flow well.  The transplant will be the harder ones.  They take more digging and more time.

So there you go for my little landscaping up-date.

Best of both worlds.

As the good weather comes in, I am going to be burning some extra calories and getting fit in new ways with the help of my yard.  That’s right, landscaping.  I have a pretty big yard and a landscape plan that encompasses all of it.  It has been requested by some that I post pics of the work that I am doing so every now and then I will do so.  Today is one of those days.  I know it is a bit off topic but the simple fact is that yard work is fantastic for our bodies and it produces a result that improves our lives and the communities that we live in.  So having a nice yard doesn’t just affect me, it affects all the people who see it.  It has the potential to bring peacefulness and inspiration to those who pass by or visit.  This is not about impressing others or keeping up with the “Joneses”.  I truly believe that creating a beautiful scenery is a help to the surrounding community.  Landscaping is the best of both the exercise and community improvement worlds.  Here are some pics.

This is the plan on paper

 All in all, there are many neat things that I will be doing with my landscape.  Many wonderful native plantings as well as ALOT of lawn removal.  I have created all the planting beds now and with the amount of lawn that I removed I have reduced lawn mowing time from about 3 hours to about 1 hour and 15 minutes.

This is th flagstone path that I built

 This is the main flagstone path the I built that runs from my driveway to the rear of the house.  I did this all myself after work in one week.  This was really hard work but not near as hard as creating the beds by removing sod.

This is three of the six 10' cedars for screening

 These trees will provide screening of the neighbors for more privacy.  All in all there will be 29 new trees of various types planted.  I have planted 26 so far.  Trees add structure to a landscape.

This is my back lawn with additional flagstone paths that I built coming off the deck and through the trees on the right.

This is a view of my back lawn from almost the property line.  It is a vary nice and relaxing atmosphere which is my goal for the plan.  Providing beautification and peacefulness to my home is the desired outcome.  Oh yeah, and fun too.  I am hoping that it will be a great place for my future children to play and frolic.

I will keep updating pics as I move along.  My wife takes these pics as you can tell they are of a much higher quality as compared to when I take them. HAHAHA  HAve a great day