Have been promising picture updates for the yard…just wrote up a nice post and lost it, so you get no pithy comments! The photo of the front didn’t come out so well, but the close up of the “terracing” did:
Back yard (tent is “play area,” kieran and abby are sitting in the area that will some day hopefully be a deck extending off of french doors where the ugly window currently exists):
As previously reported, we decided to tackle the impending space issue by adding a backyard studio to serve as our home office, thus freeing up our current office space for Abby’s room. This required demolishing the existing “shack” that we had at one point in time referred to lovingly as the “hermitage,” thinking that somehow we could rennovate it into something useful beyond garden storage. This little dream was initially concocted waaaaaaay back when we moved into this house and the sellers did a fine job of tidying up the shack (no bugs, no vines growing through the walls, no mice, etc.) Really there was only one wall that was half way decent…luckily it faced the house so it made for a rather nice little hermitage, especially when one kept the yard tidy. I dug around for the initial pictures after we bought the property:
I have to say the photo made me weep. I mean, it wasn’t inventive landscaping by any stretch of the imagination, and the grass was mostly weeds, but the space was nonetheless inviting and pleasant. That is, until we got a hold of it turning it into something a little like this:
Clearly uninhabitable. We have many poor excuses, but I won’t bore you with what boils down to very busy lives and outright neglect. So here we are. The demo of the shack commenced, making way for a bobcat and we decided that we might as well gut the landscaping and start all over. This has already proved hours of entertainment for Jack…
Then a week long downpour hit us and already moist ground turned into a mud pit.
Note the sad little rubber duck and the one lonely plant. I did consider opening up the yard for mud baths, a la Calistoga style, but we were already in shakey relations with the backyard neighbors over the bobcat access so I decided we best not rock the boat with a bunch of naked hippies walking around.
So, the new shack/shed/office arrived but the ground was too wet for installation.
And there she sat awaiting sunny skies and the dudes to return to put her together. Meanwhile K-dog Super Daddy, dug trenches and drains (that man can find directions for just about anything on the internet). Again providing more entertainment for Jack.
I’m sure he would have like to have “helped” but we took away the shovels and spades when it was his turn to roll in the mud. Finally, the ground firmed up a bit and construction was on it’s way. Two guys set up shop in the backyard while sleeping in their trailer at night and presto, whammy, we have an office!
Smiles all around!
Perhaps now, we can address the mound o’ stuff 
in what is supposed to be the baby’s room.
C-section minus 16 days, my friends, can we make it?