Feel the Rythm. Feel the Ride. Hey Everybody, it's BobCat Time!

It definitely was not Cool Runnings (Bobsledding, if you're not familiar) weather this past Tuesday. Nope, it was hot, hot, (Did I mention hot?) BobCat-ing time! We have finally done it! We decided to take the plunge and dig out the right half of our backyard. But before I reveal any of our up-to-date yard photos, we want to share how we went about finding our Bob-Cat man that we hired to start off this project. 

With so many projects to be done in The Blooming House, we feel we have mastered the art of Craigslisting. Everything we need or want, we always look to our fellow mate, Mr. Craig of Craigslist.com just in case there is that one particular item we're hunting for. And if not, we find something else on our way. So after we concurred our Corner Hutch Quest for our dining room, we began the hunt of The Landscaper. We started off by searching for people that owned their own BobCat to see what kind of pricing we'd find to plow through our backyard, pull up and remove any plants, er- weeds, that we did not want and to haul it all away. Far, far away! We also wanted to see what it would cost us to lay down new sod so that we could feel at ease with a fresh start and something a little bit more manageable.

I want to stress to any of the tree-huggers out there, that Tommy and I did not want to rip up everything living in our back yard to just throw it all away. We started off by inviting anyone and everyone to come over at their convenience to dig up anything they could identify and love as their own. Friends, family, neighbors, whomever! And after a couple afternoons with my Minnesota Aunt and Uncle and a close, gardening friend of theirs, they were able to point, dig and transplant some really nice plants from the over grown right-side to the neat and now orderly left-side of our yard (with plenty to spare for them to take home). I would have never of guessed what these plants were without them, so a big thank you to all of them. 

Black-Eyed Susans, Echinacea (Purple Coneflower), Irises, Day & Tiger Lillie's, shade ferns and Rock Cress are to name a few (but only because I couldn't keep up with which ones were being handed to me) are now found in our left-side garden. I vowed to myself that the left-side would be my challenge as a new and very inexperienced gardener, but was determined that a new start on the right would do the trick! I love how our left-side of the yard is turning out so far and some of those mysterious green plants that were at one time identified to me, are beginning to show more life and even some color to hopefully remind me of what they are next year. 

But back to the dark, more like green monster-side. We took a number of before photos in hopes that the 'afters' will be far from what it used to be. So THIS is what has grown to ridiculous measures once we realized what kind of a yard we had purchased this past January.

Do I need to point out "The Right Side" for you?

The boxed off areas that you see were at one time vegetable and herb gardens after identifying a few chives, sage and last year's leftover (and rotted) onions bulbs. I'm planning on keeping the two plant boxes placed nicely on the left-side of the path to challenge myself to a vegetable garden of my own someday.

And here is the biggest and most over grown rhubarb plant that you could ever imagine set foot at the end of our yard, just before our driveway/alley.

As you can see now, we had quite the collection of some really great plants, only growing in the most "eclectic" fashion to put it nicely. But what we're really excited to get back to is the BobCat-ing part...

I stumbled across a guy on Craigslist that owns his own landscaping company and I can honestly say we replied to his post solely because of his landscaping company name... Lawn-n-Order. After meeting him and having him meet our yard, we obviously hired him from his experience and tip-top pricing. But Lawn-n-Order sold me. Our yard had committed some serious crimes and we wanted him to take action on it. Perfect.

About three hours later (and that included about a 45 minute route to the city dump to haul away the first of two loads, here's what he had achieved.

 All I could think about while he was scootin' around was 'Beep Beep! Comin' through!'

Such a cute little BobCat with very big results.

Goodbye over grown...well, everything! Into the trailer you go. Notice, no more rhubarb.

This was taken from our upstairs landing. Or you could say I was 'jumping for joy' to capture this shot!

G'bye plant-box-o-weeds.

We asked that Mr. Lawn-n-Order man to make his way around the two new trees that were planted by the previous owners. No tree-killers here.

At the end of the day...

 

 ...and there's no turnin' back!

It was such a fabulous Tuesday afternoon for us and we even had a few curious visitors stop over as it made such a big impact. We may have a mud-pit in the back of our money-pit, but we're still quite proud of it all.

So now we're on our way and putting our landscaping hats on as this will be a first at plotting out a brand new yard to enjoy. Tommy and I have decided to sod the yard ourselves, (with the help of some friends and family of course) since this is The Blooming House and what good would it be if we didn't get a little dirty in the process. The freshly cut sod will be delivered this Memorial Day weekend so  please keep your fingers crossed for us!