Daddy's Little Helper

Anna loves to do what we are doing more and more. Since Anna likes to play in the dirt, we can't use Roundup in the back any longer. Therefore, I spent Saturday morning weeding our back Garden. My wife had been working on it slowly but something made me feel bad about having the pregnant woman on her knees pulling weeds, as much as I hate weeding. First I raked away the pine straw and then took out the weeds in the area. After I filled a trash bag with weeds and clippings, Anna grabbed the rake and was off working on the garden herself. She was cute and determined, albeit not successful since the rake was upside down. Now I am looking forward to the fall and maybe planting some bulbs with her that we can see pop up next spring.

Anna's completed playplace (in pictures)

Anna saw it immediately and was excited after her nap. Here she is climbing on it the first time

And looking through the side

First zoomed out view from the back porch

Second zoomed out view from the back porch

Cassie wants to get on it as well!

Part 5 of Anna's playplace - Complete

We are done!!!

1.5 cubic yards was the perfect amount of playground mulch. It took a about 30 minutes to move and spread with Heathers help (don't worry, she just pushed the mulch around after I dumped it!)...


Then, we assembled the Step 2 playset. Wow was that easy! Snap together and 4 screws completes the task.


We are eager for Anna to wake up from her nap so that she can try it out!

Running total including tax:
Dirt: $135
Seed, weed barrier, and tools: $55
Sod: $125
Playground mulch: $50
Playset: $290
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Total: $655

Part 4 of Anna's playplace

Our lawn person happened to come Thursday and mentioned that we would be dealing with a lot of mud based on the shade in that area and suggested we just sod it. She mentioned getting good sod at Super Sod which is just down at the farmer's market and sells sod in smaller amounts than by the pallet. John helped with his pickup and we got 25 rolls of sod, each of which covers 9 sq ft. We laid it out and now we have sod around the playplace:



We also picked up 1.5 cu yds of mulch, all his Honda Ridgeline would hold. I should have it all done by this weekend!

Part 3 os Anna's playplace

Anna's playplace is almost complete. Today I installed the weed barrier as discussed in my last post. We also purchased the Step2 Naturally Playful Woodland Climber at Woodplay of the Carolinas today. Amazingly enough, the box fit into my Toyota Matrix with the back seats down.


Unfortunately, The Mulch Masters where I planned to buy the playground mulch from won't deliver less than a 5 cubic yard group of mulch and I don't have a pickup truck. The first time I could borrow a friend's pickup between the hours of 7 AM and 5 PM when they are open was on Friday...so no mulch yet means Anna can only play on the weed barrier...hence the pictures above :-)

Part 2 of Anna's playplace

I continued the work on moving topsoil during the rain Sunday afternoon. All of the topsoil is now moved and the rains continued and got harder. The rain is supposed to continue all week, so I am praying that all my topsoil doesn't get washed away. The good news is that the area doesn't get hit hard by rains due to the tree cover. Here is a picture of the area with all the topsoil moved now:

The next phase of Anna's playplace is to put down a weed barrier. At the cheapest level, weed barriers are simply plastic like in trash bags that cover the ground. There are problems with the cheap weed barriers, including what happens to water. The expensive ones are puncture resistant and allow water to flow through easily as well as last for a long time. Since I was covering a relatively small area, 13.5' x 12.5', I decided to go for an expensive weed barrier. I choose the Easy Gardener brand Commercial Grade Weed Block which came in a package 4' x 50' and ran about $20. Since it has to overlap. this ended up being about the perfect size. I can cut four strips of 12.5' long and overlap the four feet about 9" each sheet. I also bought about 40 garden stakes to pin the weed barrier down.

If this week lightens up on rain, I will be ordering 2 cu yds of playground mulch and getting the project finished. Meanwhile, in the areas around the play place I am fertilizing and planting grass. Since we are in a drought, the rain will provide the opportune moisture to get my grass started growing. Hopefully the area will be completed by this weekend.

Back-breaking project -- Anna's play place

I have a cool project I am in the midst of at our house, too bad I woke up this morning with a sore back from it. In our backyard as you come off the deck, we used to have a brush pile and a bunch of trees. We had to get rid of the largest pine and while they were at it, the tree company offered to take away our brush pile. We gladly let them take this away and instead of piling more debris there, we decided the area made for a perfect play place for Anna as its shaded and close to the deck. At the same time, we decided we would reclaim some of the existing "garden" and make it into more grass in the back yard.

The problem is that the area is still covered with a layer of leafy mulch, no thicker than three inches. The area was also not as level as we like. Further, we couldn't see the area because of some overgrown bushes. Yesterday, I started to tackle all of these issues.

First thing yesterday morning, I moved the bricks delineating our garden and exposed more of what was declared garden to the "grass" side. I then spread out the leafy mulch, more evening the land. The land with leafy mulch on it was too soft in general and it would need covered in dirt to solidify the ground while the leafy mulch decomposes, much like how a landfill works but with less dirt. Then I hacked back the bushes at the end of the deck, too much from Heather's viewpoint, but in a way that hopefully should allow them to grow back and us to have a better view of Anna's new play place. This generated so much debris that I had to call John over to bring his truck and help me take it to the landfill.

By the time I got back, I had to take a break because it was raining and there was about to be a baby shower at our house, meaning I needed to clean up and be ready to take care of Anna. While the ladies were downstairs at the baby shower and Anna was asleep, I called and ordered 3 cubic yards of topsoil from Mulch Masters to put over this area. Around three hours later, the topsoil shows and I had my large pile of topsoil. Our guests left around 5 PM and I took advantage of the remaining daylight and lack of rain to start moving topsoil. I got about one and a half hours of moving topsoil in before the rain started again, but I feel good about the progress that was made. I took this picture this morning:

On the right you can see the light grey bricks with the new delineation of the garden. Everything between those 4 trees, about 12.5' X 13.5' will become Anna's playplace. The remaining area thats not grass will be covered in topsoil and have grass planted on it.

Once I finish moving the topsoil, I plan to cover Anna's area with a weed barrier and then playground mulch. We then hope to get some of the plastic play structures like this to put in there:


We still have a lot of work to do, but I plan to track some progress here :-)