Wood chips

Our yard is ringed by planter beds which will be filled with wood chips and later plants such as fruit trees and ornamental grass. Since last fall when the grass was installed we have had the beds sitting empty with bare dirt. I started putting wood chips in, but it's an ongoing project due to the bags being heavy and awkward. I don't like to handle more than a few bags at a time (too tedious and unwieldy) so I just grab 5 every time I'm at Home Depot, which is often.

The dogs are having a field day eating the chips and scattering them throughout the yard. The grass actually looks a lot better than it does in this picture - we had shut off some of the sprinklers to set up a seating area outside, so some of the grass got a little brown. It's better now though.

Fence slats

We have an apartment building right next door to us, and the main walkway into the building is right next to our yard. We have a ficus hedge along this side, and due to lack of space behind the hedge, the only kind of fence we could install was a chain link. We had to put fencing in to keep the dogs in, but obviously the fencing is see through. This caused much barking and upset on the part of the dogs, and we didn't like being in fishbowl. We decided to install plastic slats in the fencing to make it less transparent, and we are quite pleased with the results. Eventually, the ficus will hide more and more of it, but it doesn't look bad even now. This is a spot near the house where a lot of fence is visible: