So far he's made a valiant effort to restore the front lawn back to grass rather than a weed patch of morning glory, dandelions and some obnoxious stickery weeds that are so old that their roots are as thick as or thicker than a pencil.
He has also cleared out some of the jungle in front of the house, partly so he can get in there to paint, but mainly because it was filled with Oregon Grape, which is not something we were interested in keeping. Below is a before picture of the area:
Unfortunately I haven't taken an after picture of the area yet, but I did get a picture of some of the nasty Oregon Grape roots. Mark said these things were a pain to get out!
Since we're not big fans of a lot of lawn, Mark has also started digging out some planting beds in the front yard. We had our ceremonial first planting on Sunday. Mark chose to plant this 'Husker Red' Beardtongue. It's a descendant of one in our Sugarhouse yard that Mark purchased many years ago on one of his Saturday morning nursery outings with his mom. He said it's the plant that first got him interested in gardening, so it has a lot of significance.
Teasing the roots. Max is standing ready with a handful of compost.
Filling in the dirt.
A lone plant in a big bed. No doubt this will be filled in soon with plants and flowers. Mark's been dividing many of our favorite plants from our Sugarhouse yard and has been transporting them up to be planted at the new house. We've also been given a bunch of plants by our new neighbor and others, so Mark plans to start a garden journal that he can use to document where each plant came from.
The cute little ditch that runs in front of our house. We love the soothing sound of the water running down it, but we wonder if it's going to be a source of constant aggravation considering we have one wild boy and one wild dog! We totally expect Max to either be in it all the time or be floating things down it that he probably shouldn't, and we know for a fact that Rosie is going to try to get in it whenever she can! Mark hopes to prevent some of this by digging out some big beds in front of the ditch and planting a bunch of plants and flowers. We'll see how successful it is at deterring the wild ones!
Our Costco sized bags of bulbs. The red and white tulips will be planted in the beds by the ditch and the orange tulips and white daffodils will be planted around the yard.
The back yard has mainly been ignored so far because it's a much bigger project, and will probably be a work in progress for a few years. We're not sure if we can save the lawn back there because it appears to be way more weed than grass. We'll see how it looks in the spring.The advantage to not focusing on the backyard right now is that we can let the kids and dog go wild back there and not worry about them ruining something. Max has an area back there where he can dig in the dirt with his trucks, and the other day we let the kids turn it into a mud pit. It kept them entertained for a few minutes.
Back in the north 40 we have quite the fruit orchard. There's a pear tree...
and an apple tree that has grapes growing all through it. Unfortunately the apple tree will have to go for sure. It's really old and has been neglected for years. Big branches have fallen off, and it's pretty much a mess. We're not sure if we'll keep the pear tree or not. 
We're excited to have a Sycamore tree in the back yard up near the kitchen door. They have such interesting bark, and they're great trees.
And finally I thought I'd end with the lucky 1945 penny Mark found while digging out the bed in the front yard. Crazy to think that the guy who owned the house in the 40's or 50's could have dropped this penny out there. Then again, it could have been dropped in the 70's, 80's or 90's! Let's just hope it brings us luck in finishing this massive project we've undertaken!
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