Life in the Sunshine State: Backyard landscaping

Eric and I have FINALLY started work on our backyard. When we bought the house, it had been sitting empty for about two years, and the entire yard (both front and back) consisted of nothing but weeds. We had our front yard sodded almost immediately because that is what was visible to everybody coming into the development, but our backyard is fenced. We could hide that hideousness away from everybody...........except for ourselves. I was sick of looking at it, and more importantly, I was sick of not being able to make good use of our fenced in backyard with the kids and the dogs. It would be nice to just send everybody out back to play when I need a break. :-)

So we decided we were going to put mulch where the kids play items are (the huge trampoline and the sand table), around the fence enclosure for our pool/patio, and around the five huge palm trees that are in our backyard. It was A LOT of mulch!!! We did that part ourselves, and the next step if having someone come in and put sod down in what is left of the backyard. It was a ton of hard, manual work, and of course, neighbors actually stopped to tell us that we were a tad bit crazy (they didn't use that exact word, of course), for working on our backyard in July. The heat index was right at 100 degrees by about 9:30 or 10:00 in the morning, and stayed that way until about supper time. It was hot and exhausting, but we did a lot of work a few weekends ago, and I think the mulched areas look so much nicer than the nasty weeks that were there!

Here are some before pictures of our backyard:

We had to put some fill dirt down in some of the low spots.

Eric had sprayed the weeks with Round-Up in the spots where we wanted to put down mulch.

These are the five palm trees in our backyard.

We decided to put mulch down along the back brick fence that belongs to the association.

This is the big area of the kids' play things that we decided to mulch instead of sod.

It was a family adventure!

About mid-morning, the truck delivering all of our mulch showed up, and dumped the load in our driveway. I said it was a lot of much:

The kids LOVED it though!!! At first I told them to keep off of it, but who was I kidding?? It is impossible to resist for any child, and it actually worked out well. They had so much fun climbing on it, that I didn't have to worry about Silas running out into the street or wandering away while Eric and I were taking wheelbarrow trip after wheelbarrow trip of this mulch from our driveway to the backyard.

It was so exhausting for all of us, my hands had blisters, Eric's feet were actually bleeding from where his shoes were rubbing, our backs were sore, and it rained on us at least once while we were working, but I really think the backyard looks so much better now! It just looks cleaner and more freshened up to me. Next will be the new sod, and then it will be a great backyard. Here are the after pictures: