worth anything and is it worth having it cut somewhere? Thanks for your help!

to plant every summer. SO - My nephew cut out shapes of shrubs out of plywood and I painted them. Here they are! It's a fairytale look, don't you think?

showing up). In the last few weeks, there are ant hills appearing daily. Many ant hills. What is the best way to get rid of them at this stage? Would a liquid spray work better than a granular bait? I am going to use a barrier treatment around the house, but feel I need to do something on the hills themselves. All the rain we are having isn't helping matters, either.

sit still while on them. :) dare you to sit on one and not LOL

is under the trees and gets lots of leaves in it. The fountain leaks in back and the water keeps getting lower and lower, probably a hole in the liner somewhere.

So we are thinking of filling in the pond w/small red lava landscaping rock on bottom (lots of this in a garden we are redoing and I dislike it), then river rocks on top w/the fountain still bubbling up in the middle. Any suggestions on how to do this properly so that the water will not leak out, and we don't have to continue to refill the water level? Thanks for any ideas, I live in Wyoming so there is LOTS of snow in the winter and it is only used in the summer months.

Now we are also going to redo the front of the house w/a full length deck (eventually a roof over it). Have some cinder blocks, and thought about using wood decking over them w/the blocks as support. Do we need to place the blocks in sand to level? Or how should we proceed?

dogs to stop digging holes. the dirt they dig up looks just like sand. I just want a nice green yard without holes

Red Pots: 27" Walmart

Lanterns: Misc stores (all were under $20 - Home Goods, Pier One, Garden Ridge)

You can learn more details about how I transformed the space from my blog.

vexing problem, sometimes it's the blank slate of a new yard. To show you such issues are not insurmountable, I am starting this thread where Hometalk members can show before and after photos from their gardens, and I'll break the ice with two pairs of photos from my own backyard. As the before photos (taken almost exactly three years ago) show, when I bought this neglected little house, the"yard" was nothing but sand and weeds. Today, happily, things look rather different. So start uploading, and let's show folks what can be done!

#beforeandafter