Got Grass?

Wow, so it's been a while since I blogged and blogger changed their format! I think it's better, but will take some getting used to. 

Anyways, things are happening around the 'ol homestead. Last summer, we put a bit of grass in our dirt filled backyard. We didn't really plan ahead, it was kind of a spur of the moment decision. Well, things worked out for us to get a sprinkler system and add more grass in the backyard. We really should have done the sprinkler system first to begin with, but oh well.

So on Monday and Tuesday of last week, we got the sprinkler system installed. 

Then on Saturday, we did the sod. We were lucky enough to get four missionaries to come out and help us. Even better, one of the elders, just happened to have a TON of experience laying sod. He just went right in there and seriously took over and pretty much laid all the sod himself. I was in charge of the hose and making sure the ground was wet before laying the sod and everyone else brought the sod from the front of the house and laid it down and the one elder put it in place. It was pretty crazy, we got it all laid in an hour! We had some leftover sod, so we ended up digging out some dead patches in the backyard and front yard and putting in the new sod. That actually took longer than actually laying down the sod. The missionaries were great, they worked so hard. We were so appreciative of all their hard work. We fed them lunch, and that was about all we could do for them. 

Before, ugly dirt.

We had to dig out some old sod that we took from the side of our house two years ago, in hopes to get some kind of grass back here. It wasn't that great and turned into a bunch of weeds, rather than grass. So, we had to take that out before the sprinklers were installed.

We had to loosen the dirt in a lot of other areas, to assure that the sod would take root. That was a lot of hard work. Then, we had to even it out as much as possible, so that sod wouldn't be all bumpy and uneven.

The beautiful, new sod!

I love it!

Nice...

The flash makes it look lighter here, than it really is. 

It's so nice to have a more normal backyard. We didn't do the whole backyard, because that would have been much too expensive. But a little over half of it, is now all nice and green. We are planning on adding some kind of stone or brick around the edge of the grass, to give it a more finished look.

 And I'm so excited because the sod was delivered on pallets and we get to keep the pallets! I'm so excited to make some pallet furniture out of it! This is what I'm thinking:

A nice bench for the patio. 

Some planter boxes. These would be so easy to make!

Hopefully, this summer we'll be able to make these and make our patio look a little nicer. :)