The whole 9 yards

Yeah, like I need NINE yards to weed! One is plenty. Here's what's going on in our li'l patch of heaven.

This crazy half-enclosed gazebo-thing. It looks SO ODD in pictures, even pretty odd in real-life, but it's just so darn functional that we can't argue with it. Protection from the sun and rain, a west wall to shade it every evening, low walls for seating, etc. Next summer we'll pick up some furniture that's a little classier than camping chairs.

Patrick's sandbox. Unfortunately, all the weeds grew right through the protective layer under the sand, so now it's all torn up and we have to EMPTY the sandbox, re-lay black fabric, and re-fill the sand. Patrick's not too picky, though, he just digs around the uprooted fabric.

These pavers are just to the right of the covered area; we're pretty sure it was for a hot tub, but we plan on turning it into a relaxing fire-pit area.

To the left of the covered area (behind the wall with windows... why windows? We're not sure) is the massive storage area. When Patrick's bad we send him to sleep out here :) Oh, alright, but we WOULD like to try yard-camping one of these days.

There are two horseshoe pits, both extremely overgrown, but we'd like to restore this one because how cool is that??

Just north of the horseshoes is the Forbidden Forrest. We have about 20 feet more of backyard than you can see because these outrageous dead shrubs! But they remain, in spite of my love of chopping and trimming, because we have no other plans for this area and they're at least a little sound barrier between us and 120th Avenue.

To the right of the Forbidden Forrest is our new compost bin! With so many weeds and shrubs and gardening extras, it seemed silly to throw them away (plus impossible to fit them in the dumpster), so Joe built this for me. Still have work to do o it, and the compost won't be ready for at least a year, but it gives us a great place to dump it all! And when it IS ready, it can go towards our little garden...

...just to the south! We gave up some grass for it, but the soil is very good I needed a place FAST to put my plants! They were all in pots until we moved in, so we weren't planting our garden 'til AUGUST! I thought we'd just have to wait 'til next summer and try again since it was such a late transplant, but it looks like we might have something to look forward to this fall.

Maybe a watermelon?

Or some seriously deformed cucumbers?

Definitely some fried green tomatoes!

And a couple little peppers for good measure. Although a number of our neighbors have huge tomato plants with red, ripe tomatoes, I consider it QUITE an accomplishment to have any veggies all! Until we got them in the ground, not a single plant had anything but leaves, and 2 weeks later almost every one does!

So that's our very busy backyard, we're out there every single day working on one project or another. Boy, I do NOT miss living in an apartment! We love you, house!