Being a homeowner is a never ending job!

It's always something, isn't it? When we bought our home back in 2005 there was a nice new landscaping area beside the pool. It had beautiful shrubs and perennials, a pond complete with a fountain, landscaping lights as well as lights inside the pond, shiny marble rock, and tiki torches all around the deck railing.

Well, it was a beautiful space and made for lovely entertaining, the 3 times we've entertained adults over the past 5 years. Since then we've learned a few things about landscaping.

1. Our lab likes to dig in dirt, mulch, and even rocks.
2. Our toddler likes to dump things into the pond. A habit we've yet to figure out how to break.
3. While the plants were beautiful when we move in the previous homeowner apparently paid no attention to the growth potential of these plants and they have since well overgrown the space.
4. We don't have time to clean a pond, and maintain it with 4 children, especially the aforementioned toddler.
5. I suck at watering plants. I simply forget all about them!
6. The space around the pool isn't very accommodating for seating. We need this large landscaping area for seating around the pool for the adults!

So, we decided to remove the landscaping, plant the plants in areas that would be big enough for them, reuse the dirt for leveling out the old garden that is sunken down quite a lot, reuse the rocks for other landscaped areas, and find a use for the timber used as the landscaping retention wall. Possibly sell the pond itself.

We dug out plants, and moved 500 lbs of rock, and relocated about 3 tons of dirt. We finally get the pond drained and when we removed it this evening we found that it was set in concrete. Basically we are stuck with a concrete pind beneath the black plastic pond. We'll have to rent a jackhammer to get rid of this pond, and then find a way to dispose of the concrete!

I digress...by the time we get this done school will be back in session!



This is where we started...

and this is where we are stuck!