Much like everyone else living in the Northeast, I could not be more excited to see the snow gone. It was a long, cold, snowy winter here in Albany and I’ve been getting antsy. For those of you that know me, know that I turned into a but of an amateur landscape artist. A few years ago I redid my first backyard in an effort by my roommates and I to no longer have a dirt pit as a yard. Last year, I revamped the yard at my parent’s Albany property. When I bought this house, I was THRILLED to see that it wasn’t a total mess. However, it needed some serious love. 

I previously posted in regards to my initial tackle of the over grown backyard. I would look outside every morning of the winter and think, “I’m coming for ya!!”  Well, on Sunday, I decided to take advantage of the sunny day and did just that.  My intentions were to rake the leaves and start to assess what was going on. This is how it looked when I started. 

It was a pleasant surprise to see some flowers popping up in the middle. However, they were in an  inconvenient space. You can see against the back there is a missing piece of the slate wall. As I started to investigate, I found that under the leaves and dirt was actually the base of what was a brick wall. Once I started digging, I just couldn’t stop and ended up doing this 

Apparently the brick path to the right also went to the back fence. This was another surprise of the afternoon.   For some reason there was a bunch of extra tiles lining the side fence. So I reshuffled them and used them to create the wall. This was my first attempt at building a wall out of slate tiles.

It was like miserable tower puzzle. I stacked and unstacked these tiles for what felt like ever. I think I finally figured it out and went with this. 

While I was busy throwing slate around Katie arrived and started doing the raking I initially set out to do. She also put her green thumb to work and replanted the flowers that were popping up. 

Here is a view from above

I’m pretty pleased by what Sunday turned into. While it was really the last thing I wanted to do after painting all day on Saturday, it was so good to be outside. There’s much more to be done back here, but, I’m glad the weather and my schedule have been cooperating!  Can’t wait to continue back here to create a little oasis.  Hope you’re enjoying the sun!

-Little Miss Improvement