My back yard and goodwill finds

I usually don't like for anyone to see my back yard.  We will have lived here for two years in August.  When we first looked at the house the landscaping is what made me not want to buy this house but once I went inside it was a different story.  I knew that I could make this house work for me.

I love to garden but lately I don't have much time.  I dug out everything in the front yard last year and replanted.  This year I just don't have to time to do the back yard.  It needs to have all the rock removed, cleaned, new fabric and then replace the rock.  We decided to hire this out.  Of course I will be doing all the new planting myself.

I forgot to get some before pictures of the bushes along the back fence so here is some photos from the original listing.  This is the front of the house.

I tried to crop this picture so you can see the lamp post area.  It came out blurry but you can see how overgrown this area is. It had three bushes and some daylillys around it.  I removed the bushes and kept the daylillys.

 We  changed out the light fixture and added a trellis for the clematis that I planted.  Here is what it looked like last year.

 Here is what the front yard looks like right now.  Most of the flowers are still not full grown yet.

Now for the back yard.  This is the only picture I could find on the listing where you can see part of the bushes along the back on the right corner of the picture. I also trimmed out the choke cherry bush at the bottom of the stairs.  There wasn't a fence when we bought it so we had one installed since we have two small dogs and we back up to open space.

Here is what the back yard looks like now.  They are almost done with getting the rock finished and they are also putting in a new paver path on the side of the house.

I am so ready to get some flowers in this area.

Here is what the pathway looked liked when we moved in. I don't know why anyone would install the edging like this. Pretty gross!   I am grateful that this is on the side of the house where no one can see it.

Now this is how it looks before the pavers go in.  It looks 100% better.  We would probably leave it like this but if we have a heavy rain it will just keep washing the breeze away.

Now onto the Goodwill finds.

I told myself that I do not need anymore soup tureens as I am running out of room but when it is marked $5.99 and is half off I couldn't resist.

I also found this nightstand for $7.99.  It is in pretty rough shape as someone tried to paint it but didn't do a very good job.  I am thinking about refinishing it and putting in the corner on my back porch.