The yard is coming along

We hired a landscaping company for a couple of projects:

• The patio needed to be cleaned quite badly
• The hack job of a path behind the garage was both unsafe and ugly
• We wanted to have the beds along the sides and back of the yard moved closer to the lot line (we do NOT need giant beds full of weeds)
• We also wanted some sort transition from the path to a less structured walkway toward the garage

Most of these projects were beyond our skills and also our equipment. We don't own any sort of tiny bulldozer or the tool this company used to cut the narrow trench for the new beds. We might have been able to clean the patio, but probably not nearly as well or as efficiently as they did. And we sure wouldn't have solved the down spout issue on the side of the garage.

Here are some before/after photos:

Dirty bricks and filthy chimenea:

Hack job of a path from the previous owner (which we tried & failed to fix):

It's just an ankle twist waiting to happen:

See the chain link fence? That area was full of weeds and the downspout couldn't do a great job (downspout is off camera to the left):

Clean! And the fish is too!

Another view; also gone is the honking big grill that we used once in the last eight years. They said they have a graveyard of old grills:

Looking toward the new path:

From the path back to the patio:

New stepping stones which are shaped like slices of wood:

New sod and we hope it gets enough light that it doesn't die (we also need to trim back those bushes, that will help a lot):

MUCH improved downspout area! We hadn't even asked about that, they saw the need and did it:

Now winter weather needs to go away so we can put our sun umbrella out and start enjoying this.