Sodding Our Yard

In the three or four years that we've owned this house there have been many times when I wanted to put a sign out in our front yard that read "Dear neighbors, I'm sorry." Our yard has been an eye sore and a good example of why people invented HOAs. Of course we have good excuses. We started our efforts on the inside of our house so the yard has been dangling at the end of our to do list since purchasing the home. We've also been busy over the last couple of years with getting married, cookin' up a baby and then raising one. Now, however, we are looking to sell our beloved little home and have had to get crackin' on our long forgotten to do list. 

Earlier this week we decided that this Saturday would be devoted to laying sod in our front yard. Even before we had decided to sell, we knew we would want to sod that area this Spring because I finally gave in to the fact that a big front yard garden and a baby don't mix well. I was going to scale back my efforts, but with wanting to move we had to speed up our timeline. During Claire's naps this past week I weeded, tilled and leveled the empty half of our front yard and did the research and ordering of sod. The prep took about 4.5 hours, but wasn't as hard and I had anticipated. I had weeded that side of the yard earlier in the winter so my job wasn't quite as rough as it could have been. After breakfast Jeff went to pick up the sod and we got to work.

Laying sod we actually kind of fun. It was cool to do a yard project that produced instant gratification (a rare thing indeed) and the process of rolling our grass like it was carpet was just interesting. Part way through we realized we were going to have plenty of extra sod so Jeff set to work ripping out weeds and leveling the other side of yard to lay sod there. We had planned on doing bark around the raised beds, but we figured why waste the extra sod. We had enough to do about half of that side of the yard and will do the rest later this week. 

I wish we had decided to do this project before I got pregnant! It was so much easier than I anticipated and it would have been way less time consuming to take care of than a garden. It looks so nice out there now I kind of want to have a party before we sell the house to show everyone! No more making apologies for my front yard. Yay!