In the continuing saga that is my backyard we have moved onto phase 2, landscaping. By landscaping I don’t mean adding a couple of pretty flowers. We are moving, no, making mountains (aka berms). Check out phase one in the post Garden: Revolution. The plan is to flood irrigate grass from the canal behind our house, so it was important that the land be graded for that purpose. We took bids from 3 local companies. One was really low but wasn’t willing to grade the land the way I wanted. The second was full of great ideas, but would have cost a small fortune. Thankfully, Cutting Edge Lawn Company came in with a reasonable bid and was perfectly happy to grade the land accordingly. I would highly recommend them to anyone looking for landscaping/gardening help here in the Treasure Valley. The project took two days and I didn’t have to lift a finger. That’s the kind of landscaping help I can appreciate!

Here comes the mighty Bobcat Excavator! And a quick glimpse at the yard before the destruction.

Misty, checking out the heavy artillery. This is David, our friendly landscaper. He’s setting up his fancy grading gizmo which beeped accordingly. He was friendly, professional, happy and has a 1.5 year old daughter, so he got along with Porter really well.

Plucking dead trees from the ground.

Porter was in big machine heaven.

Midday it looked like this. There was a lot more topsoil than the gardener expected so he was able to do some really big berms around the edges. It’s awesome.

Meanwhile, Porter ate raspberries. Hurray!

Hands down his most favorite food of all time.

Isn’t it the prettiest soil you’ve ever seen?! Okay, so maybe it doesn’t look like much, but in person it’s a huge difference. There is a huge basin in the center of the yard, awaiting grass to be installed this Saturday. There is compost laid and it’s graded perfectly. Tomorrow I plan on putting plants in the ground. While this is totally off topic, it’s also totally cute. I’ve been trying to get Porter to feed himself for the last couple weeks and he’s finally taken. In fact, he won’t eat anything unless he can shove it into his own mouth. Tonight he looked like the last of the  Mohicans with applesauce/pea/sweet potato puree smeared on his face. Sigh, I wanted this independence from him, I just didn’t expect to need so much Spray and Wash! Mmmmmmm, dinner. I started this meal feeding him from a spoon, which he quickly forced from my fingers and threw onto the ground. He then proceeded to grunt and screech like a monkey. I thought he didn’t want to sit in his booster seat. Turns out that he just wanted to feed himself. It then quickly became face paint, but he had genuine intentions of getting it into his mouth. Bigger boy! I couldn’t decide on one video of Porter feeding himself, so here’s two.