Family Yard Work

Saturday was a beautiful day here in Tennessee.  We spent the whole day enjoying the weather and doing a small yard project.   Our backyard has been lacking.  So our mission this summer is to slowly transform it into a nice place to spend outdoors.  It has a lot of potential, it's just having the ideas and money to do something to it.  Last weekend we added an evergreen arborvitae to the horribly obvious corner.  Sure made a difference and looks great in person. 

This weekend we added landscaping timbers under the deck.  Mr A added lava rock underneath the deck last year.  His intentions were good; he wanted to prevent the underneath being taken over by weeds.  However, little did we know the lava rocks are great at holding dirt because of their small holes and can create their own weeds.  Each time I'm back there I try to convince the kids to pick out the weeds by trying to make a game of it.  Only the little one, B, falls for it.  So I'm usually under there with my helper.

While Daddy was working, the boys' snuck away some of his tools to work on their own project. Monkey see, monkey do in this house.

And our finished product (we'll eventually stain the wood to match the deck):

It may not seem like much, but it's nice to have some order to what was becoming mildly chaotic.  The plants that are in the flower bed are: sedum, lemon balm, and sea pink.