Our backyard and "garden"

In March, we were so excited to buy our first home.  And it has been absolutely wonderful to be home owners.  We can fire up the smoker and the grill whenever we want (without cops stopping by) and there aren't any dogs waking us up at 7:00 every single morning.  

But one thing I'm not sure we really grasped was just how crazy our backyard was.  Here's some pictures from the yard on closing day...

That overgrowth in the back corner was actually two trees that were being suffocated by the vine, a couple honeysuckle bushes, and 4-5 other bushes.  While taking it down, we actually found a tennis ball and football caught up in the entire mess. 

The grass was mostly dormant at this point...the crab grass that is.  That's basically all that we had back there.

At the bottom of the steps and going up to the fence on both sides of the house were little dog trails.  Previous owners had two bulldogs that really wore down the grass that was there.

Underneath our pine grove were some unnamed bushes.  And the vines were starting to takeover here too.

A full view of the yard.  Lots of brown spots, dog trails, and crab grass.

Since we bought the house, Josh has been working his butt off to make the place look better.  I don't know that I've ever seen someone work so hard on a lawn.  (Have I mentioned the I have an amazing husband, because I definitely do.)  And through his hard work, here's where we are now.  

A view of the yard from the top of the hill.  Notice that all the brush is gone from under the grove of pine trees and there's hardly anything left in the back left corner.  (And our teeny little veggie patch.  :)  )  But the best part is all the green grass that we have!  Our yard is now at least 1/3 bermuda, which is so very exciting!  Plus, there's no dog trail going down the hill!

Another view of the yard from the bottom of the steps.  We had a very big area that was only crab grass.  Josh has worked extremely hard to get it all tilled under, and he's seeded that area so that we'll have even more bermuda very soon!  There's a few patches already growing in there.  This is a better view, too of the back left corner.  No more overgrowth at all!

And, as stated in the post title, here's our little "garden."  We can't really decide what to call it.  Vegetable patch, garden, small area where we're trying to grow just a couple things?  We got started very late in the season, so we only planted an ice box watermelon, squash, zucchini, and two different varieties of strawberries.  And just yesterday we saw something that looks very promising...

Our first little watermelon!  Look how cute and tiny the thing is!  I am thrilled to see this because I was very afraid we weren't going to have anything come out of the garden at all.  But there's still promise!  Just gotta let the thing grow now.