Yard work

Yummy and I did a lot of work in my front yard this weekend. It's not done but it's very different.

I can't find good before pictures right now, but I'll show you some pictures from a few years back.
This bench was being tossed by someone who lived in the same apartment building as me. I saved it and put it on the apartment building's front porch. It moved with me.
The stones beneath it were payment for helping someone else haul off their leftover stones. Apparently you can only buy them by the half ton and he didn't need that much.

The grass doesn't really reflect what my yard looked like a few weeks ago, or even last summer. I'd been replacing it with a ground covering succulent that I grew from a tiny sprig that I pinched from someone's yard.

In both pictures you can see the edge of the tree/bush that had to be taken out. I spent a couple of days not just cutting off branches, but then trimming the branches off of the branches so they'd make a much smaller pile. Neighbor kids were happy to take the splitting trunk out just so long as they got to try their hand at working a hand saw. I borrowed a shovel from Yummy's dad to dig up the remainder of the trunk and the main hunk of roots. I wound up having to buy him a much nicer shovel. Fiberglass shovel handles? Really?

This, very roughly, is what we had in mind. Something like this had been in my head for awhile but I was always working on something inside the house.

You can see the green and yellow ground cover I mentioned. The bench has been moved way back. I didn't put bricks behind it like I did in the diagram. My orange tree grown from seed it between the bench and the wall for the moment.
The new tree is a forest pansy redbud [link].

This rather awkward angle shows a good deal of the yard. I'm standing on the front steps. The bench is below me.
The row of bricks, which used to make a path from the walkway to the strange concrete slab in front of my house, are now marking off where the sunflowers have been planted. Don't wanna step on them as we continue to work on the yard.
In front of the bricks are some of the concrete blocks I've been making. I'm estimating that I'll need nine more.
I tried to cover up the rather bare soil by placing the big pots over it. The red lilies were given to us by a neighbor who had too many. The black pot has some watermelon seeds in it. There's wintergreen mint in the pot by the tree. The pot next to the bench has spearmint and some herbs that Yummy had in a window pot last year.
It's hard to see in these pictures, but a decorative bamboo plant has popped up in the yard where my diagram called for a small garden. It's that bit of green between the lily in the black pot and the black stone on the ground. We're keeping that.

When planting the tree we used some potting soil that was being stored in a trash bin by the house. Below the potting soil was some super nasty stuff that smelled a lot like shit. Not sure what it is, but the tree should love it. We did our best to mix it with dirt and then bury it in mulch so we wouldn't have to smell it.

The yard should fill in over the next month. Also, as more blocks are made, that will help.

Not pictured:
The fence along the walkway has English Ivy growing on it. We've been using pipe cleaners to direct it more upward so that it'll fill in the fence.
The fence by where the bricks end has honeysuckle growing all over it.
Chili peppers have been planted in the white window pots on the sidewalk that you can see in one of the old pictures.
We've got some beans that I'll try to get the neighbor kids to plant.