Finishing Touches - Mulch Makes Everything Look Better

I finished laying the slate patio on Mother's Day. Since then we have enjoyed breakfast, lunch and dinner...and of course S'MORES on it. It has functioned as the outdoor living area we hoped for.

Although I 'finished' on Mother's Day I did spend another 4 hours making everything stronger the following weekend. I put on the knee pads and used a paint stirring stick to manually compact the stone dust in-between every joint...yes you read that right - every joint with a 2 inch wide stick (there is probably a medical diagnosis for someone like me). Then I filled the newly compacted cracks with more stone dust. Happy to say the slates now feel snug as a bug in a rug.

So now it is finally safe to say....I.AM.DONE.

...or am I? I looked around and the slate patio looked great, but the landscaping around the slates?...not so much. The grass and weeds were growing and the dirt areas just looked...dirty. It is a good thing that mulch makes everything look better.

Mulching Process:

• Paige and I went around the whole patio and removed all the weeds. 
• Karen weeded the gardens
• Then I removed the grass around the entrance walkway 
• I also went around with my flat shovel and cut a nice 4 inch deep edge around the whole parameter. 
• Place landscape fabric in as many areas as possible to keep the weeds at bay
• Cover with 4 inches of mulch

Mulch Colors

• Premium Brown - This is my color of choice - it is almost black when first laid out or when it is wet, but dries to a dark natural looking brown. There is no dye in this mulch. Does not stain clothing, but will make you look dirty!
• Dark Brown - this is a dyed mulch. Stains clothes. The dye wears out/fades on top from the rain/sun leaving it not looking so dark brown after a while.
• Black - Great looking when first spread out, but again this is a dyed mulch. Stains clothes. The dye wears out/fades on top. Looks gray after a period of time.
• Red - Another dyed mulch. Same problems as above and I consider this the commercial mulch. Every Dunkin Donuts, gas station, medical building uses the red mulch. I do not want my house to look like them. 
• Playground - Natural wood chip mulch. Light tan color. No dyes. No dirt. Will keep your kids clothes cleaner than any other mulch.

Mulching Tips

• If planting flowers - I like to mulch first, then plant flowers. Just move some mulch out of the way and plant your flower and push the mulch back around the flower. Flowers are delicate and can easily get trampled or squished during the mulching process.
• If planting shrubs I usually plant the shrubs first and then mulch. Shrubs need a much larger hole and you will make a mess of your mulch if you mulch first.
• Notice I said a flat shovel for making my edge. A flat shovel makes a much nicer looking natural border than a spade shovel. The rounded bottom of the spade shovel makes an uneven edge.
• 4 inch deep edge is important too. This way you can place 2 inches of mulch and still have 2 inches until the top of the edge. This way if grass is growing up to your edge, the grass will stop when it hits the air. If you place your mulch all the way to the top of the edge where it meets the grass, your grass will just keeping growing into your mulch bed. I learned this the hard way.
• 4 inches of mulch over the rest of your garden area is ideal for blocking out weeds...but landscape fabric is better...unless you are placing the mulch on a steep hill that will be walked on often. If this is the case you may want to skip the fabric because the fabric is slippery and the much will slip down when walked on revealing the fabric - again I learned this the hard way...so I know!.
• Freshly laid mulch can have an 'aroma' for the first few days after being spread out - and not in a good way - so keep this in mind if you are having guests over...this is one you don't want to learn the hard way...
• I like to place the mulch into a medium size plastic garbage can and carry it to where it is to be spread out.
• Yes using a wheelbarrow is less strenuous, but my way is faster and easier to control.
• Much faster to lay the garbage can on its side next to your pile of mulch and push the mulch into it with a spade shovel than it is to fill a wheelbarrow one shovel full at a time.
• The garbage can allows me to control exactly how much mulch I dump out and where I place it. 
• It is easier to tip-toe through the tulips in a flower bed than to maneuver a wheelbarrow around all the flowers.

Some photos to show you what I mean:

3 truck loads (4.25 yards of mulch)

Paige getting into the action

 Before & Afters

Before                                                           In Process

After - Nice Mulch Bed

Before                                                          After

Before

After

Before

After

Mulch really is the finishing touch that make everything look better.

Now the project is complete!

A Relaxing Project

After a month of hard work getting the slate patio completed, the kids and I decided it was time to do a fun project to help us all relax. Karen and the kids gave me this great triple double hammock for this past Christmas. It is comfortable...hopefully I can carve out some time to actually use it!!!

The kids definitely dominated the hammock the first day

However, I did get a a few 

minutes with My Little Helper.

I did sneak out that first night at 9:30 to do some stargazing. The kids and I are astro-buffs. We have an annual membership at MiSci and go to planetariums often. Unfortunately the hammock was not great for viewing the stars through my gigantic binoculars, because of the rocking back and forth. But it was very relaxing and I had a perfect view of Mars, the Red Planet!

Priority #1 - Making the Backyard Fun

Note - Many of you have expressed interest in seeing the inside changes and they are coming - I promise - but for now this will have to do!

The kids were excited for the new house - well really for their new bedrooms and the bigger yard. The twins were especially excited because they would have their "own big kid rooms," rather than sharing a room. It was nice to have the kids excited, because as everyone knows moving can be a tad stressful. Even more so if you the kids are not happy about the move.

All was good until we actually moved. Then the happy-happy-joy-joy quickly turned into tears. The twins realized having their own room meant actually sleeping in separate rooms! It was sad hearing "I miss Lily" and "I miss Luke."  Easy fix. Let them have sleepovers in each others rooms.  10 months later - instead of having their own beds in a room they shared like in the old house - they now have their own rooms, but share a bed - every night! We don't care. They are so cute!

At least that complaint had an easy resolution. This next one would not be as easy to correct. We started hearing whines about "how our backyard at the other house was so much more fun." I tried a simple solution - showing them how to take advantage of the bigger yard. We bought some simple and fun yard games - a volleyball set, played some wiffleball, badminton, etc. Those would work, but only when daddy or mommy could actually play with them. As soon as we stopped the "old yard more fun" chants returned. To be fair - it was understandable because the previous house did have a school yard grade swing set with monkey bars and other acrobatic attachments. In their eyes, this yard would not be as fun until they had a playground too. That is what was missing. And since being able to answer to their satisfaction the age old question "What are we doing that is fun today?" is of utmost importance to me - I was going to make it happen!

Before - hill, trees, falling apart green fence

Ideally we wanted the playground to be in an area where we could sit in our porch or in the house and still see the kids playing and keep the kids away from the road. The backyard had the location, but not the ideal landscape. It was overgrown with thick 5 foot high weeds, was on a steep hill and loaded with large trees. A regular play set would never work in-between all the trees. Also all those weeds harvested misquitos the size of the Clock family from The Secret World of Arrietty. 4 inches may be small for people, but huge for a mosquito! So first things first - I removed all the weeds so we could see what we were working with.

Before - hill of yard debris - unfortunately no pics of the 5 foot high weeds

Karen and I then came up with a plan if we could only find what we were looking for. In our original plan we needed a slide, a tree fort, a rope swing and a zip line (we already owned a zip line that we never installed at the old house). So I started looking for a slide on Craigslist (Note 1: flexibility is key when looking for used items). My first V8 moment was when I searched slide and came upon a wooden play set in Craigslist. They had Forts. They had slides. No rope swings, but they had swings. They even had monkey bars and rock walls and a place to hang out underneath. But they would never fit on the landscape...unless I could take them apart?. I wasn't sure, but with some ingenuity I thought they could be made "sectional."

After - Slide and steps built into hill...and the ugly green fence is gone

The first few I found were too small. But after about two weeks I found one in Guilderland. It was big, made of wood, was in good shape and already weathered looking (which would look great in our setting). It was mine - if I could come and take it apart and get it home. Easy peasy lemon squeezy?!...not! My brother-in-law and I went there early one Saturday - tools in hand and my company's 24 foot box truck (overkill...so I thought). Note to anybody else that has the idea of buying a used play set...expect most of the screws to be corroded closed for all of eternity! So it was not going to come apart into small pieces for easy travel like I had hoped.

Time to rethink. Luckily all the main sections were held together with nylon coated nuts and bolts that could still be removed. We were able to remove enough bolts to take the system apart into 5 large sections - the slide, the rock wall, the swings & monkey bars, the roof and then the main body of the fort. Because of the bulkiness of the large sections - we needed to beg the neighbors to help us load the sections - mind you it was before 9am on a Saturday...and I had never met any of these people in my life! The nice people of Guilderland did come through and after some loading, unloading and reloading we were able to get all the pieces to fit in the truck - without an inch to spare.

After - Tree Fort and separate swing/monkey bars getting put to good use

When I got it home I cleared an area for the body of the fort next to a tree that would support it. Keep in mind the sections were not going back together as they were originally engineered so they needed to be stabilized differently. Then I gathered some of my great new neighbors and they helped me get the fort in place and the roof back up...and then low and behold we had a fort under a tree - so in a sense it is a Tree Fort! 

Next Karen and I installed the swings and money bars against another tree. We dug the slide and some very simple railroad tie steps into the steep hill and then put the long zip line in-between two of the larger trees. Karen also painted an old wooden A-frame shrub protector with some chalkboard paint for some added fun. Then the final step was spreading out 9 yards of playground mulch (my back aches me just to write that again). All in all it took the better part of two weekends to complete the whole project.

Notice the two sets of 3 logs screwed
together used as short-run and long-run
platforms to reach the zip line.
More natural looking than step stools.

Landing area has 6 inches of mulch
and an old crib mattress up against
the tree. The mattress has since been
covered to help blend in.

Guess what?

The kids and their friends love the new playground...
 ...and I haven't heard anything about the old backyard again :-)