Remaking Our Firepit

I mentioned before that our firepit was a bit of a safety hazard when we moved in. The previous owner had basically piled random rocks and brick pieces in a (very large) circle and called it good. If you so much as bumped the rock border, said border went rolling away....not so great when they are heated from a fire. Here is a refresher on what it looked like.

Looks a little precarious right? Well, the hubs and I decided to fix that. Using a wheelbarrow we borrowed from some friends (thanks Pat and Jessica!), Jacob hauled off all those rocks and pieces of brick.

After that was done, off we went to Home Depot to find circular pavers. What we came up with was the pavers that are used to build retaining walls. At just under $2 per paver, we needed 16 pavers, so the total cost of this was about $30 (a small price to pay for the added safety and aesthetic appeal!). The really awesome thing: some of our wonderful friends gave us Home Depot gift cards as housewarming gifts...hooray! and thanks!!!)

After our little foray to Home Depot, my lovely (and studly) husband carted all the pavers to the firepit area while I started digging into the ash and sand that was already there to make a level and correctly sized ring for us to place the pavers. Turned out it works better to level enough space for one paver, place the paver and repeat until you have a full circle. Fortunately, it didn't take me long to figure this out.

Once we had a full ring of pavers, we created a second layer, just placing another ring of them on top of the ones that were already there...and without further ado, here is our new firepit!

Definitely need to do something with that dirt patch to make it look at little neater. I suspect the bermuda grass will take care of it for me though! 

I should mention that we have not gotten to use this puppy yet. The weekend we made it, it was 109, 105 and then 106 degrees, and Nashville was under a burn ban. That burn ban lasted for another week and it's been raining ever since (and good thing too, since it didn't rain for over a month here!). *sigh* Hopefully we'll get to use it soon!

Introducing....A Blank Slate (Part II)

Man is it hot here! I don't know what the weather is like where you are, but we've been breaking records left and right here in Nashville - and since we haven't had rain in over a month now, things are looking pretty brown and crunchy outside. I've been out early in the mornings watering before it gets so hot that any water will evaporate before it can do any good.

But enough about the weather. Here is my new back yard!

The previous owner graded the lawn to run into the creek on the other side of the fence so the house, and in doing so, created this retaining wall that makes a nice patio space. We're planning to use something like cobblestones to eventually pave in this space. You can see (kind of) where someone had dumped a bunch of gravel to try to create a patio space, but the weeds have taken over since it was last taken care of.

You can see where all my plants were pretty unceremoniously dumped when we were hurriedly moving everything in. I've spread them out a little since then.

Here, you can see I was in a hurry to get at least some of my vegetables in the ground. The retaining wall has a pretty handy built in bed, so I've been gradually planting the veggies I started back in February, adding mushroom compost to the soil as I go to give things a little boost.

I do have to figure out what to do with the two scraggly rose bushes in the retaining wall. Any suggestions??

We do have a pretty awesome deck....

...That's built right up to this gigantic hackberry tree. It will probably eventually come down. You can't tell from the picture, but it (and one other tree back here) hangs over the house, and the other tree is even closer to the house than this one!

We also have (actually, that's a had now...I'll do a post on it soon) a gigormous fire pit. Seriously, this thing is like 7 feet in diameter. The previous owners could have roasted pigs in this baby.

The only problem is that the border is just random rocks piled up in a circle, and if you so much as tap them, the go rolling away (maybe a bit of a safety hazard if there's actually a fire going).

Just beyond the firepit, we'll put a toolshed and a compost bin.

And here is where (I think) I'm going to put some raised beds.

So there you have it....my new backyard!