Bob-cap! Bob-cap!

Keeping with the forward momentum of getting summer projects done, we managed to get a couple more checked off the list over the last week or so!

First, we hired a service that does stump grinding and got the stumps removed. We had a total of four stumps, the large one from the willow tree and three smaller stumps in the northwest corner of the yard that were there when we moved in. The first quote we got was for about $1000 to do all three, so once again, I was seriously considering doing it myself. I was referred to another service in town and he charged $2.50 per inch of diameter of the stumps. So in total, it cost us $300 to have all three stumps taken out! Much better price in my mind. As you can see in the pictures below, I have a little bit of cleaning up to do, and a little work with an axe since they could only grind so close to the fence.

The next project we got done was the removal of the rock in the front of the house. The area in the front of the house had been overgrown with many bushes and filled with rock. We have managed to cut down most of the bushes over the last three years we have lived here, but we still needed to get rid of the rock. I wasn't about to hand shovel it, plus I needed a place to get rid of it. A friend at work recommend a guy who does landscaping and has always been good to him, so I called him up. He came out and said it would be an easy job. He would just get his skid loader and haul it down to the local landscaping dump. He estimated that I had about four yards of dirt and rock and figured it would only take him about 3 hours to do! He charged me $275! I couldn't say no! Maeve had a blast watching him haul the rock away. We told her he was using a Bobcat (which is a brand name for a type of skid loader and an often generalized term for all of them). She did her best to say it on her own and said Bob-cap! Very cute! She has since reformed the term and is saying Bob-cat!

So, now that the destruction is done, we have to start making things nicer! Over the next few weeks, we are going to get the stump areas cleaned out, graded, and grass plated. In the front, we are going to figure out what we are going to do for edging and get that installed, along with a weed barrier, mulch, and grass. I'm not sure if we will get anything new planted this year, but we might depending on time!