old lorton prison

We found the Old Lorton Prison by accident last week while running errands. I kept thinking about the guard tower and how fun it would be to photograph the area. We headed down this afternoon and spent about 30 minutes wandering around the northern part of the prison, snapping away. We'd like to go back and visit additional areas next weekend. 

Here are a few of the shots I took:

year of the yard, status update

Here's where we started about a week after moving in and installing the fence:

Not great, but not the worst, either. Then we DIY'd a patio:

We continued the patio to the edge of the house (three more rows). But the winter was not kind to our yard, and we ended up with a muddy mess. Said muddy mess required wiping Joey's feet a dozen times a day - something he HATES.

Not fun, not pretty. We debated the pros and cons seeding the yard or laying sod. Seeding the yard would require keeping the dog out of the back yard for at least a month, defeating the purpose of having a fenced in yard. Sod it was. The problem with sod is that it requires prep work, and the amount of prep work is determined by how uncrappy the yard is. Unfortunately for us, ours was/is MEGA-CRAPPY. The previous ownder, Hoarder Tom, didn't believe in yard maintenance. At all. The yard is uneven, incredibly rocky, full of random stuff like lengths of chain, roofing nails, broken dish pieces, you name it, all with a web of thick vines and roots lurking just under the surface. Had we hired a landscaping company to prep the ground and lay the sod, it would have been an obscene amount of money. Brian decided to buy a tiller and do it himself.

He probably tilled this main area of the yard half a dozen times over the course of several weekends. Then we had sod delivered and put it down ourselves.

And now it looks like this:

I think Joey is the happiest about the new yard: