DEBBIE-DABBLE BLOG

I am a Victorian Soul, who lives in a small townhouse that was built in the mid 1970's, not a huge Mega Mansion!! I just recently lost my Hubby Joe, who was a Retired Letter Carrier. I worked night shift as an RN on a Hospital based Rehabilitation( Physical Medicine) Unit for 37 years before I had Knee Replacement Surgery and officially Retired in 2019 after 41 years working in Direct Patient Care ... I am so glad that we retired at 62 years of age and got to spend that time together before he passed....I still do love Retirement!!!!

I DABBLE IN A BIT OF THIS AND THAT!!!!

" IT IS NEVER TOO LATE TO BE WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE BEEN"
George Eliot

George Eliot was actually a pen name for a woman named Mary Anne Evans......

BLOGGING FOR FUN AND FRIENDSHIP!!!!!!

Monday, April 13, 2026

Major Back Yard Project, 2026

Welcome to Debbie-Dabble Blog!!

I am so happy you decided to stop by!!

Blogging has always been a stress reliever for me along with an avenue to share my passions which are my home and my garden.....

I feel it is a personal Journal that, hopefully, someday, my Twin Granddaughters will be able to look back on to learn about who I was....

I will be posting 3 times a week on MONDAYS, THURSDAYS and SATURDAYS....

As always, click on each picture if you would like to enlarge it....

PINTEREST

If you would like to Pin my pictures, please click on them to enlarge them to do so....

A NOTE ABOUT COMMENTS

I enjoy reading your comments and will return the favor by visiting and commenting on your blog or reply to you directly here if you do not have a blog but I do have my comment section set to Moderation due to spammers and hackers so your comment will not appear immediately...

And since I have a very busy life, like most of us do, it may take me awhile to return your comments but I promise I will....

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In my last post, I shared how I did in March with my Monthly Goals and what my Goals for April are....

Click HERE if you missed that post!!

And now for a few Personal Notes...

For the New Year, I am trying something different with my 3 times weekly posts....

On THURSDAYS, I will feature what I cooked and ate during the week, showcasing local cuisine and a few recipes for things that I actually made...

I decided that on SATURDAYS, I will showcase What I Have Been Up To in the past week, sharing events and places I went to, if any....

On MONDAYS, I will be featuring What I Have Bought or Been Gifted Recently, if anything...

It's Monday so that means it is time to see what I bought lately.....

I picked up a few things in Dollar Tree that caught my eye....

Since we are not only celebrating our Country's 250th Birthday, but also Pennsylvania's 250th Birthday as we are one of the original 13 Colonies, I am going to go all out with my Patriotic Summer decorations this year..

These metal signs caught my eye and I plan on using them on the front porch....

This blue denim like ribbon caught my eye too....

This mirror is a big thing on social media like You Tube Channels so I grabbed it as it was the last one left...

And I picked up these cute Lady Bug yard stakes as I have a few mini flags and a porch flag with Lady Bugs on them....

These were all $1.75 each.....

I also ran into Dollar General to pick up buns for pulled chicken sandwiches on Saturday and I stumbled upon their 50% off Easter sale....

I could not resist grabbing these cute wooden items at 50 cents a piece!!

And I will get to what else I bought shortly....

I want to wish those that celebrated Russian Orthodox Easter yesterday a very Happy Easter !!!

We have a huge population of those that go by the Julian calendar in this area, celebrating Easter and Christmas on different dates than the rest of us ....

I also bought all of this.....

There are 11 bag of brown rubber mulch here that I bought from Sam's Club and had delivered for free as I have the premium membership...

I explain why I went with the rubber mulch for my back yard, after 2 years of not mulching it at all after my husband Joe passed away, HERE....

I hope it will be worth my investment and last for several years so I do not have to keep replacing ti every year like we had to do with the bark mulch...

Since I removed all the grass and went with all flower beds in my very small back yard, we went with red bark mulch because of the red paver walkways that I also put in....

These are pictures of what it looked like 3 years ago which was the last time that we mulched the back yard.....

Now I am going to show just how bad it looked at the end of this Winter, which was our coldest Winter here in NEPA in 30 years......

After not being mulched for 2 Springs, the mulch had disintegrated and I was pretty much left with dirt and mud....

Plus, I had a lot of weeds that were already starting to grow....

After I fell last September, I did not get out to clean up the remainder of the fallen leaves before Winter....

I also did not get to cut back some of the perennials that I planted in pots....

The freezing and refreezing of the ground had knocked over a lot of my garden things too....

And also caused the scalloped brick border to lean to one side or in some cases, to just fall over...

Yep!!!

It was a disaster that I needed to do something about.....

DAY ONE......THURSDAY

Now, when I was younger, I used to be able to do this in 1 day...

I decided that I was not going to even attempt to try that and felt I would give myself 3 days to get it done...

I started on the left side of the yard , which was the worst for some reason....

I was getting a lot of weeds against the fence here, coming from my next door neighbor's yard....

Since the mulch had turned to dirt, it was providing a great medium for weeds so I removed the scalloped brick border and rocks that I had against the fence, cut long 18 inch wide strips of weed block fabric that I had in my stash and put them down , lining the whole side where the fence is...

I then mulched the whole area after straightening out the rest of the scalloped brick borders along the walkways....

I leveled out the pavers leading to the arbor....

I also got out some of my solar lights.....

I then removed all the rocks against the back fence, laid down a strip of weed block fabric,

replaced re rocks and put the new mulch down.....

I also sprayed my homemade weed killer made from vinegar, salt and Dawn against the fence before putting the weed block fabric down....

I also cleaned out all the pots that I have perennials, like hostas, in....

And I uprighted some things that had fallen over....

I cleaned the back step area, moved pots around and swept up a ton of weeds....

After finishing the left side of the yard, I decided to also do the right side of the yard , which is just a small strip of land....

This is how it looked after the Winter.....

After I cleaned out all the leaves, removed the rocks against the fence, put down a strip of weed block fabric and mulched....

And that was it for me for DAY ONE....

I had used 7 1/2 bags of brown rubber mulch, putting down about a 2 1/2 inch layer....

I took a hot shower, 600 mg. of Motrin as my back was killing me and sat with a heating pad for the rest of the evening....

DAY TWO .........FRIDAY

I decided to work on the middle section of the yard, which honestly was not as bad as the left side was...

Again, a before picture of the middle of the yard.....

Quite the mess....

I got to work against the back fence, removing the rocks, putting down the weed block fabric, pulling weeds and putting down the new mulch....

I also had to clean out a lot of leaves in the back....

I took the tarps off everything I had stored and covered against the back of the house...

I set up the bird bath....

And put out a bit more of my garden items...

I had put 3 bags of mulch on the front porch thinking that I would use it out there but I needed it to complete this middle area which took 5 bags....

Next, I attacked the area in the back by the garden shed and I almost filled up a garbage bag with leaves that had collected back there....

I cleaned up the area around the garden shed, including the side against the fence.....

I then decided to clean out the garden shed, which I will be sharing in my post on THURSDAY.....

I hung the garden shovels that I made a few years ago, back on the doors of the shed and will give it a good cleaning with bleach to get the dirt and mold off of it another day....

I also moved some of the furniture out into the Patio from against the back of the house where I stored it for the Winter.....

I had one more project that I wanted to do on DAY TWO and that was a paint one and again, I will be sharing that project on THURSDAY....

After all of that, I called it quits for DAY TWO and again took a nice hot shower, 600 mg. of Motrin as I could have cried when I went to bend down, or walk for that matter, and sat with a heating pad on my lower back for the rest of the evening...

DAY THREE........SATURDAY

Now I am no gluten for punishment so I knew I had to take it easy on DAY THREE

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I had tried ordering 9 more bags of mulch from Sam's Club, hoping to use it in the flower bed on top of the slope out front and in the flower bed under the LR window but they cancelled the order stating the mulch was now out of stock...

I looked online and it said it was still available so I ordered 3 more bags along with other things, figuring that the 3 bags would let me finish the corner by the shed and the flower bed under the LR window...

And they delivered the 3 bags....

So I finished the right side in the corner of the garden shed...

I only used a half a bag.....

I had gone to Lowe's in the morning and bought Preen, which is recommended by most landscapers here....

After I finished with all the mulching in the back yard, I then put a heavy coat of Preen over it as directed....

I also put out the pillars for the gazing balls....

And hung the ceramic birdhouses on the arbor....

I hope that all the measures I took to keep any weeds at bay will work....

The Preen I bought offers 3 month's of protection so at the end of July, I will be putting down another coat of it....

I am very happy with how it looks and working with the rubber mulch was a joy as it was clean and I noticed it does not blow around....

I always had to sweep my back patio because of dust and dirt blowing onto it...I hope that the rubber mulch will also keep that at bay....

I still have to clean up my patio, bring up the rugs from my storage shed and get it set up for the Summer with my pillows and cushion and patio accessories....

I hope to get that done this week but we are going to be having a heat wave in the 80's and I do not do well with heat so I may need to push that off until the following week when we return to more seasonal temps. in the 60's....

I am glad that finally, after 2 years, I was able to get the back yard taken care of and looking decent again...

I am curious to see how the perennials that I have planed over the years will do this Season....

Time will tell....

I hope you will stop by to visit again on THURSDAY for my next post in which I will be sharing a few more garden projects....

Stay safe, healthy and most of all, HAPPY!!

And try to find JOY in every single day!

Thanks to those who took the time out of their busy day to spend a little bit of time with me!!

If you do not have a blog, PLEASE give me some way to reply to your comment, maybe by including your email in your comment. If I can not find a way to reach you, I will reply on the post where you commented so please check back......