A Great Big Mess {construction, construction, and more construction}

Most people don't know that the house we bought two years ago was located next to an empty lot behind and on one side. But the lot was not to remain empty for long. About the same time we bought the house, some developers came in and started construction to build some community housing apartments. Fast forward two years and they still are not done building said complex. The buildings are finally up, the sidewalk has been poured and the parking lot is in the works right now. I tell ya what, it's rather interesting to have your whole house vibrate and rattle from the big equipment they use to put in that parking lot. Thankfully, once the parking lot is in, the big equipment part of the construction will be pretty much done so I can stop worrying about all that.

What does all this have to do with anything, you ask? With all the construction going on, we've had a little big of contact with the manager of the project. One of the main things he's talked to us about is our landscaping and how much it doesn't agree with what they want things to look like. Namely our gigantic blue spruce trees. He thinks they're ugly and wants them gone. I don't. So they stay. 

When we bought this house, there was a very large tree on the South side of our driveway. It really wasn't much to look at necessarily, but it was a fully grown tree that did help provide a little shade on the house. Believe it or not, I cannot find a photo of the tree. Here is a photo that shows kind of where the tree was:

The tree is right above Dan. Helpful, I know; but believe me, it was there. You can also see the empty lot just beyond the fence there.



 
You can also see what Dan is working on in these photos. Right next to the driveway was about two feet of grass, a stone barrier and then a flower bed filled with daffodils and tulips. We decided we didn't love the two foot strip of grass {it was a pain to water and mow} so we {or, more correctly, Dan} dug out the grass, moved the stone barrier and made the whole thing a long flower bed. We did that last spring. Then last fall we dug up the tulips and daffodils and replanted them so they would line the driveway more uniformly. Then we planted some peonies behind them, with the idea that they will someday grow big and fill in the space a little. After all that {and believe me, we spent days working on that}, we laid down groundcloth to keep the weeds under control. Then this spring, we covered it all over with bark to make it look nice.

Just weeks after we had finally gotten that flower bed exactly the way we wanted it, the manager of the construction project came to us with a dilemma. They needed to put in some fire hydrants and the city told them they had to put the water line for it right along the property line eight feet down. The reason this was a problem was because of our big tree that was planted practically on the property line. If they dug down that deep on their side, they would chop all the roots of the tree off on the South side. This of course would make the tree very unstable and with the fantastic winds we have around here, it's not a good idea for a tree to be so unstable. Since it was because of something they were doing that would make the tree unstable, they offered to just completely remove the tree for us. I have to admit I was pretty upset when Dan told me all of this. Admittedly, I cried about it. However, I blame it mostly on pregnancy hormones. Anyway, to make a long story short, we had to take a tree we didn't want gone in the first place and ultimately the stump of the tree didn't get taken out the way we would have liked and it made a huge mess.

See, that right there? That's where our tree used to be. That's the huge mess that remained of my lovely flower bed after they yanked the stump out.

And this over here? That's the stump that ultimately caused the whole mess. Big, huh?

Unfortunately, the mess still hasn't been cleaned yet. For a lot of reasons, it's been put on the back burner. So it still looks like a huge mess. But someday we'll get that bed back to the way we want it.