Dad Brigade to the Rescue!

The front flower bed getting ready for its facelift. Michael cut down the overgrown pine shrub before our help arrived.










The stream with the water plants that did TOO well and overtook my stream.

The Lower pond before: (It is the bigger of the 2 ponds)








Overview of the front flower bed before: (I have always hated the big bricks around the ponds and the stream!)













The Upper Pond:



The lineup of bags of pebbles. We bought 66 bags thinking that would be enough. I ended up getting 20 more that day and still probably need 10-15 more. So much for accurately calculating things.














For our arts auction at Hannah's school we auctioned off a bunch of dads (aka Dad Brigade) to do 4 hours of yard work. Originally more guys were to come but couldn't for one reason or another. Although I have to say thanks to Jim, Bruce and Rick. You were an amazing bunch of guys and helped us get through this project so quickly.




































And now for the after pictures. I love how the whole thing turned out.
This is the way I have imagined it for years. I even got some great new water plants, thanks to Rick. All the rock lining the ponds and streams and the big boulders came from freecycle. I am loving freecycle. That saved us a ton of money on this project. Good thing since we underestimated the amount of rock we needed.
Still need to add my birdbath that the kids and I created on Mother's Day, once Michael finally adheres the bowl. I am also thinking of bring back a cactus in a pot from my next trip to Arizona to put in my garden during the summer and then bring in the house for the winter. The last big project is to make a waterfall into the larger pond but that will have to wait until we get a lot of other projects done before we tackle that.