My backyard overhaul journal
 

You haven't seen much of me on the forums this whole summer - it's cause I've been super busy with my backyard. My tank has suffered from negligence. I have been dealing with cyano for about 2 months. Everything is still alive though. I have probably removed (sold) about a dozen super large colonies. Last week I sold a colony that I had to break in half to fit into a 5 gal bucket. Anyway, here is what I have been up to:

This is the backyard we started with
http://i600.photobucket.com/albums/t...e/IMG_2645.jpg

This is what we want it to look like. We hired a landscape designer since we made many mistakes in our front yard with types of plants and ground covers (that eventually became weeds or too big etc). He came up with this concept which blew us away. We thought that we'd have a giant pond, but not THAT big. We loved the design, so we went with it.
http://i600.photobucket.com/albums/t...me/photo-7.jpg

And the top view (scale drawing)
http://i600.photobucket.com/albums/t...e/IMG_2725.jpg

So then came end of July and we started by ripping up the grass. We have a rental house that needed grass so we moved most of it over to the rental house (fairly easy since the rental house is less than a block away). The rain in July was horrible for trying to grade mud.....but alas we did finish it. A posting on Kijiji for free sod helped us get rid of the rest.
http://i600.photobucket.com/albums/t...e/IMG_2683.jpg

Then began the work of laying out the flagstone patio. I NEVER want to do this again. It was tough to level out each one and fit the "puzzle" together. I had to excavate about 5" so that I could get a good 5" layer of road crush and tamp it.

This is it partially laid out (however, I ended up changing all of it in the end and re-laying it out)
http://i600.photobucket.com/albums/t...e/IMG_2729.jpg

I was hoping that you'd throw this into the forum! Who knows when I'll be able to make it by again. Keep up the good work!

Next was digging LARGE holes for trees and planting trees. We ended up planting 11 trees and 2 large hydrangeas. There are still 3 more potted swedish aspens that we'll plant when the project is mostly done as we took a section of fence out so that I could get machinery in and out of the yard. The aspens will go against that fence once it's back in.

I had a machine to aid me in the digging
http://i600.photobucket.com/albums/t...e/IMG_2731.jpg

I had to make 4 holes this big
http://i600.photobucket.com/albums/t...e/IMG_2735.jpg

The tree company craning the trees in
http://i600.photobucket.com/albums/t...e/IMG_2736.jpg
http://i600.photobucket.com/albums/t...e/IMG_2737.jpg

Now for carpentry work. Have never built pergolas of any kind and there isn't much for cantilever style pergolas on the net, so here goes just taking it one step at a time.

Start with a pile of cedar
http://i600.photobucket.com/albums/t...e/IMG_2740.jpg

This shows my cedar posts and my beam for the deck to support the deck/bridge
http://i600.photobucket.com/albums/t...e/IMG_2738.jpg

This shows one of the pergolas and the start of the bridge, oh and the finished flagstone patio
http://i600.photobucket.com/albums/t...e/IMG_2754.jpg

Wow looks sweet Dez but where are the kiddies going to play now :sad: Very impressive design, will be watching as well.

This was not part of the plan, but as parents we felt bad that the kids swing had to go away so I built them a sandbox off to the side.
http://i600.photobucket.com/albums/t...e/IMG_2769.jpg

The pond is designed that the kids will be able to climb in and all over it. There will be a large stone they'll be able to step out to and stick their hands in the waterfalls. We have warm water going out to one of our hose bibs, next year I am going to make a simple outdoor shower so that they can warm up. They will have fun running back and forth across the bridge and they should be able to skate on it in the winter.

NICE!!! The design of the sand box will blend in very nice.: VERY COOL!

I thought you were going to put fish in the pond ?