Front garden progress - Raised beds and gravel.

We've had some very sunny days here lately and I've been taking advantage or them as much as possible.  I spent Friday out in the back garden cleaning out the pond and enjoying signs of spring back there.  The string algae has already started taking over the pond, it seems to be worse this time of year.  I got most of the pond plants cut back and noticed some baby fish from last year swimming around.

We are focusing so much attention on the front yard that I don't want to forget to enjoy what's happening in the back.  Crocuses are blooming as well as Daffodils and Bleeding Hearts are quickly growing in.

Now onto the front garden:
I left off on the last post "The lawn is gone" showing that we had removed all of the sod and were left with two big piles.  Luckily I got two great suggestions at the end of that post with what we could do with it and we used both ideas.  Eileen mentioned using leftover sod at the bottom of beds they had put in years ago and it decomposed into nice soil.  We filled the bottom third of these beds with the sod put in upside down.  Tina suggested putting it on an internet listing - she uses freecycle, but we tried craigslist.  We had two people take quite a bit to use for their own projects.  That saved a day of renting a truck, paying dump fees and many hours of moving the sod again.  This is what I love about blogging - all these great ideas I would never have thought of.

 Here the beds had been set in place.  We spent Saturday morning putting the beds together in weather in the upper 30's, very cold but the sun was out

The beds had been set into the ground at this point.  It was a lot of work because the ground under the lawn was rock and then hard clay.  My husband had the smart idea of having the crushed gravel dumped right into place rather than the driveway where we usually have deliveries left.

Whoever says women are bad drivers never saw our awesome dump truck driver maneuver this truck around and then dump the gravel exactly where we wanted it.  She was amazing.

 This was the beginning of Sunday.  It was very cold the night before and everything including the pile of gravel froze.  While we waited for things to thaw we put down more landscape fabric and moved the last big pile of sod to the driveway where it's going to be picked up tomorrow.  I don't ever want to pick up sod again.

We also put in this edging to keep the gravel out of where the fence and soil will be, once the soil is in it should barely be noticeable.

Between the raised be and the edging it's nice and filled in with gravel.

 Here's the muscle moving some of the 7 yards of crushed gravel.  He really lived up to his name today.  This area will have a small table and chairs and lots of planters in it.  We're calling it the courtyard.

 By the end of Sunday that whole pile of gravel was gone!  It was such a relief when it was finally all cleaned up.

Sweet Pea on a well deserved break.  We were able to get everything and then some accomplished that we had planned for the weekend.

My husband has taken the week off in hopes of getting everything finished.  Of course we now have snow and below freezing weather (10 to 20 degrees below normal) predicted for most of the week so hopefully we can still get everything done on the good days.  Our plan for tomorrow is to start some post holes.  We wanted to use an auger but found that we'll have to be careful because of lines that run near where we want to put them.  Then we are taking a few days off to have fun and make a trip into the Flower and Garden Show.