Front Steps

There is a narrow, thin slab of concrete across the front of the house and on either side of the steps. I presume knee walls used to stand there, creating planting beds. I suspect some of the spare bricks I stacked in the back yard came from there.
My master plan is to rehabilitate the front porch area. The rehabilitation includes removal of the existing concrete deck, steps, and concrete wall caps. The brick walls would be completely reworked and topped with new caps, and a new concrete deck and staircase constructed. The knee walls of the staircase and planting beds would be reconstructed as well, using the brick stored in back. The porch roof also needs to be reworked. My dream is to accomplish this by winter of 2011.

But for now, in mid summer, I am making cool weather work plans for the fall and into the winter. I feel like the people in a department store. They are in preparation for the end of summer sales and the advent of "back to school". The fall colors are probably being distributed behind the scenes at this time. Preparation is key and now's the time for fall preparations.

This is my cool weather work plan for this area. The mulch comes out of the beds to be reprocessed with the mulch from the mulch pile. I will pull up the border grass and taking a sharp shovel, I will cultivate the soil in the beds leaving them clean and raked smooth. The shrubs will receive some thinning and shaping. I will separate and re-plant the border grass to make a more even border. When I am satisfied the beds are "all square", I will cover them with some number 3 mulch to over- winter. Maybe Becky will find some fall color to plant in the beds.

The newly developed bed on the east side of the porch will need complete reconstruction to transform the bed from a temporary feature to a permanent fixture. Maybe I will call this bed my orphanage as I started it with orphan plants.
The ground between the front porch corner and the tree to the left is in a state of uncontrolled erosion. I'm going to address that with some sort of check dam. The addition of some mulch and grass seed will encourage the front and side lawns to join together.

Our property line runs down the middle of the drive as the fence line indicates. I thought it was by the tree in front on the left. We discovered this when the fence installers located the the pins that mark the corners. The house is not square on the lot. At the front corner of the porch there is only about 4' to the line, if that. The days of using this for parking are numbered.