I Was Mistaken for a Landscaper Today. I Was That Muddy

Carrie is a customizer. She likes to put her own touch on things and has a good eye for aesthetics. My job is to help make it happen.

I only have two requests when it comes to yard work: don't spend a lot and make sure it's low-maintenance once it's done!



We hired a landscaper back in May. Carrie saw him working across the street from us, and asked for a quote. She even got a discount for being able to pay partly in cash.

Sadly, he never finished the project.

He did about half of what we paid him for and vanished.

Never pay in full before the job is done. The guy said his youngest kid fell off a bike and broke his wrist before he disappeared. He came by a week or two later and told me his mom had a stroke while one of his sons picked up some tools they left in our yard.

That was the last we heard from him. The phone number is disconnected and none of the neighbors can reach him either.

I gave Roy the benefit of the doubt for close to a month until another neighbor said he ran on them years and years ago. "He treats some people in the neighborhood real nice," (like the people who referred him to us) she said, "but he's ducked and run before. He asks us every year if we want that stump removed in our front yard that we paid him to do years ago."

Well, damn.

Way back when I started saying a prayer of "Lord, if Roy's really going through hard times I pray you help him out. If he was planning on running with my money from the start, I pray he feels guilty about it. Whatever the case, your will be done."

There's not really much more to be done. Whether Roy did it intentionally or unintentionally (he over-promised) it's stealing. If I ever see him around the neighborhood, I'll confront him, but basically I've forgiven him and moved on. I don't know what the circumstances were, it won't change anything for me, and I have a yard to finish.

There was some shoddy work here and there (like throwing mulch over some tree stumps where my wife wanted to plant things and hoping we wouldn't notice), but a lot did get done. Carrie's projects went from way more than I could do to something I can possibly finish most of.

Long story, on to some pictures:


Our house started off looking like this:

We had two sheds in our back yard: one functional and the other was a rusted, trash-filled mess without doors.

The yard was full of dead-nettle and mint. The mint did smell really nice when I mowed!

Our front walkway was recessed bricks. We often parked a car on the left of the bricks as you can see in the next photo.

Here's our old front door! There were a pair of dead/not-so-healthy trees in front of our big windows on the main floor.

Our yard started to change when Carrie took out the middle mulch bed to make a playground area for Shane.

The next major change came when Carrie and I decided to grow our own food. We each gutted a raised bed, and jointly gutted the third.

I'll talk more about those in a garden post!

The landscaper came in and ripped up a lot of weeds, but he never finished mulching. I was clearing weeds out for almost a month before school ended and I decided to do something about it. 

Roy's kids/workers also swept dirt back into the mulch on the front yard tree bed. Grass grew like discounts at a going-out-of-business sale. I ended up rolling up several areas like sod and did the rest by hand.

I picked up a truckload of bulk mulch today, but I haven't had a chance to spread it down yet.

The landscaper did take down the old shed and fence. What the pictures don't show is Carrie and I helped carry the shed across the street to Daniel's parents yard and the landscaper left a pile of rotting wood and rusted metal in the middle of our yard. Carrie and I eventually threw in the truck and took it to the dump ourselves when we realized he wasn't coming back (it only cost $6 to dump it, though!)

The picture also doesn't show the day I spent ripping out creeping ivy. I filled two contractor trash bags full!

Also, it's a jungle behind the other shed. My plan is to gut it all, till it, mulch it, and then throw all the concrete in the yard on top of it.



In the back corner, I spent a day ripping out vines that included poison ivy. It keeps growing back, so I bought some spray to control it. The Virginia weather keeps predicting rain, so I haven't been available to spray on a day the weather would allow me to.



I have a similar weed problem in the parking area up front. I bought the RoundUp to take care of it, but the intermittent thunderstorms haven't allowed me to spray yet. I could be impatient and start spraying, but I am more concerned about over-doing the poison than watching weeds grow. My son runs around in there.

Today, I spent three hours digging out small tree stumps. One was mini, but the other two were fair-sized brush. I was tempted to rent a stump grinder, but Carrie was worried the stumps were too close to the house and pipes. Tree stumps don't come out easy even when they're small.

I would have more pictures, but Carrie came home from work early sick and with the results of some recent bloodwork. I plan on updating this post with more pictures and I want to take some more pictures with a good camera of the yard, too.

I have a lot of good garden pictures for a post on our garden next.

Stay tuned!