In the beginning...

...There was dirt. 

Or more specifically, rock-hard Wyoming clay. We were fortunate enough to qualify for a Habitat for Humanity house and were able to help build it from the ground up. We started from scratch, so everything you see in our yard was grown, built, or put there by us or volunteers - every shrub, tree, plant, blade of grass, and structure.

Here's a pic of my daughter and I on our empty lot

Eight months later, Nancy Freudenthal (first lady of Wyoming at the time and all-around amazing woman) and volunteers help dig the sprinkler lines on a Women's Build Day.

Gunther attending the move-in ceremony. He was adopted the day before from the Habitat ReStore. 

 Since our neighborhood used to be underneath the Snake River hundreds of years ago, the yard frequently bloomed large river rocks, which were saved for the flower beds. Our entire first summer was not spent gardening - it was spent with shovels, rakes and a wheel barrow, transporting piles of rocks and attempting to make the yard level. 

Sod was not in the budget, so we grew our lawn from seed. All around us, neighbors laid sod while I cursed. I fortified the dirt with some high-quality topsoil, just in places where it was particularly needed, as bringing in a yard full of good soil would have been too costly. 

Our first beds went in before the house was even complete, thanks to a Habitat volunteer. I showed up on my lunch hour to say hello and I had veggie beds! The fence went in several summers later. 

The first flower bed - First Tulips and Crocus arrive, then Daisies, Hollyhocks, Sage, Snow in Summer, Lupine, Asters, and Delphinium. All those rocks were lugged from various parts of the yard.

The most amazing Mother's Day gift ever - my husband built these beautiful cedar beds. My nephew lived with us one summer and created the mulch path.

It took 6 summers for the yard to evolve to this point...but of course it will never stop evolving. There will always be another project on the horizon!

It was an overwhelming amount of work at the beginning. My neighbor, who also started most of her yard from scratch, gave me a piece of wisdom I have held onto: "one project at a time." Focus on one part of your yard that you would like to change and go for it. Little by little, it comes together.