Big Birch Lake

Our weekend getaway to our friend's house on Big Birch Lake (near Grey Eagle, MN) was very enjoyable. I just wish we could have spent another day or two there...our hosts were very gracious. We ate well, and we had a nice guest house to stay in. I hope we can get up there again sometime.

The first picture shows the back side and patio of our friends house. It's really a beautiful house, and they've done a nice job with the landscaping, patios, and walkways:



This is a photo of the guest house where Richard and I stayed. It has two bedrooms, kitchen, bathroom, and living room:



This is a view of the pier from the main house:




The next two pictures are of a lovely sunset from the main house. The house is located on the east side of the lake, so there's always a great view of the sunsets. Unfortunately, the wind blowing across the lake can get very cold which was the case on Saturday. The wind settled down towards evening though, and Sunday was a beautiful day to be outside:

Final Result

Here are pics of the final result of our landscaping. The first one shows the new "upper patio" area that was created up on the hill. It's going to be fun to put our swing and fireplace up there...and have a bonfire.



This next picture shows the replacement wall for the old wooden wall. The new wall really turned out nice!!!


Now, we just need to get the grass growing again.

Escape

By the time I finished watering the yard last night, it was too late to get any pics of the new retaining wall and patio area. Hopefully, mother nature will help out a bit with the watering over the next few days...I will be posting pics of the final landscaping results soon though.

Until we get the fence/gate put up on the west side of our house, I put up a temporary barrier using landscaping fabric. Prior to the landscaping work being done, it kept the pets in just fine. Puff, however, figured out yesterday that she could easily go under it, so she came to meet me in the front yard while I was doing the watering. Weezer must have seen what she did because soon after I put her in the house, Weezer was in the front yard barking at the neighbors. At least he didn't run out of the yard...Puff has always been an intelligent cat in most ways except when it comes to marking her territory (in our opinion).

It is finished!

When I went home for lunch today, the landscapers were in the process of repairing the lawn and cleaning up the piles of dirt, gravel, and pallets that were in the road. By the time I had finished eating lunch, they were loading the last things onto their flatbed trailer.

The landscaping looks great, and I'm very happy with the job that they did. The big surprise is how well the new area up on the hill looks. We're really excited about being able to use that space now. It will make a nice area to relax around a bonfire.

I'll take some pics this evening and post them.

Now, if we'd just get a nice gentle rain to start the grass seed growing...

Another Landscaping Pic

Here's how the replacement wall and the new one up above on the hill currently look:



Hopefully, the ground will dry out this weekend so that they can finish everything on Monday. We had almost an inch of rain yesterday according to my rain gauge. So, the ground is quite muddy today.

So close but...

Mother Nature has not been nice the last couple of days. Again this afternoon, we're getting a thunderstorm which is dumping quite a bit of rain at the moment. Unfortunately, this will probably mean that the final day of landscaping work on our house will have to wait until next week...Grrrr!!!

Landscaping Pics

Here are some pics from our landscaping. The first one is a picture of the cul de sac where we live and all the dirt, landscaping equipment, etc.:



This next picture is a view of the workers up on the hill in our backyard. They were working on leveling out an area above the old retaining wall. I was surprised that they were able to get the bobcat up on the hill. There was just barely enough room to get it up there:

Landscaping Update #2

The guys are back working on the landscaping again today. Yesterday, they weren't able to work on it at all due to a steady rain that lasted for a couple of hours. It was nice for the farmers that we got the rain, but it did delay the progress of the landscapers.

In fact, the ground is still so wet that they may even need to wait another day to finish the work on the upper part of the yard that they're leveling out. I walked up there to discuss the work with the main landscaper and it was actually rather slippery since the ground has a lot of clay in it...hopefully, tomorrow they'll get the bobcat up there and finish that part off.

They also started working on the east side of our house where we had the seepage problem in the spring. It shouldn't take them very long to get the landscaping finished there. So, I'm hoping everything will be done by the weekend...unless Mother Nature throws another rainstorm at us...

Landscaping Update

The landscaping is coming along very well. I've taken a few more pics, but I haven't downloaded them from my camera yet. Anyway, they're about 2/3 finished with replacing the old retaining wall. They're also nearly finished with leveling a spot out of the hill above the old wall...I was really surprised that they were able to get the bobcat up the hill to the area where they created the new level spot. There wasn't a lot of room to work with, but they managed just fine! I'm really quite impressed with the work they've done so far and at how quickly it's all be coming together.

The finishing work of putting the cap stones on the walls will take some time since they have to cut the cap stones to fit, but I'm sure it's really going to look great!

Pics #1

The first picture is a view of the part of the old wooden retaining wall that started to really concern me. The one beam at the bottom is obviously completely rotten and starting to separate from the rest of the wall. The other beams above it are also starting to bow outwards.



This next picture is a view of the entire wooden retaining wall.



The final picture is a view of the yard after the old wall was removed.

Out with the old!

The landscapers (Rock Solid) arrived early in the afternoon yesterday and had the old wooden retaining wall removed within a few hours. The beams were in pretty poor condition and a lot of them broke into pieces as they were taking them out. Many were hollow inside...one even contained a hornets nest. The hornets delayed the removal a bit. The owner of Rock Solid got stung about a half-dozen times before he realized they'd disturbed a hornets nest. It didn't seem to phase him too much though. He just went and got some spray and proceeded to spray the hornets and their nest until they were mostly killed...I guess it's a fairly common problem that they run into when working on the wooden retaining walls from what he was saying.

After they'd left, we also discovered a very unhappy mole that lost its home. Weezer wanted to catch and kill it, but it got away before he could. I didn't want him to catch it anyway because it might have made him sick.

I've been taking a few pictures of this project which I'll post over the weekend and as the work progresses.

WOOT!!!

The contractor called yesterday and said that they're going to start to work on our landscaping today!!! I can hardly wait to get this project over with! I will be so nice to get rid of that old, ugly wooden retaining wall! Once they're finished then I can start to work on getting the lawn back into shape. It's got a lot of weeds growing in it now because I figured there was no sense in spending time/money on it if it was going to get torn up by the landscaping.

There have been some really nice sales on perennials lately at places like Shopko and Jim Whiting's Nursery. I'm actually quite impressed at both the quality and price of the perennials at Shopko. A lot of times the plants in their spring garden center are neglected and look pretty crappy, but the plants they're selling now are really nice! So, I've been buying some and filling in a few problem areas in the yard...I'm glad I waited for the late summer sales rather than spending a lot of money in the spring when the plants are being sold at a much higher price.