When we first purchased our home back in 2013, it was bare. No trees, no shrubs, no landscaping: a super easy yard to keep up. But that’s not us! We craved mature trees, and bends and curves amongst our grass.

One of the first improvements that Sam did was a low budget retaining wall.

Sam got the help of one of our friends son’s to come over and work on the front yard with him.

The trench was dug where these logs would be placed.

Sam was extremely motivated, enough to keep going at it in the rain!

Here are the lovely logs. And the story behind these beauties? We were at a building my dad was running a side business at, and off to the side of this building was a field that was quite swampy. Laying in the swamp mess, were these giant logs.

Sam immediately inquired about hauling these babies home for our yard, and permission was granted. After hooking them up to our SUV, and pulling them out, we somehow loaded them on our trailer. I still don’t understand how we got these monsters on there.

Anywho: Sam got to work stabilizing these guys in preparation for their new location.

And in order to make them more stable, he placed some bricks underneath them instead of resting them on the dirt.

Years ago we were searching through our local army salvage junk yard, and found this rope that is tied around our logs. We were going for a boat dock type look back then.

And, a few years later: here’s our lovely logs with my roses and peonies and Hydrangeas. (See my post on replanting these perennials here.)

It took us about 4 years to finally plant some flowers in this empty flower box, but we accomplished the task this year!

Sam did take an outdoor stain to these logs as well to help preserve them.

What do you think?

With Love, Erika Nora