We went out to Julie’s parent’s land in Evant this weekend. We managed to secure some free river rock, that just requires us to load it into a trailer, and then our neighbor is driving it over to our house. That loading is quite a lot of work, though. We’re probably a little over halfway through and that first picture is how much we’ve done. A lot more work than we were expecting. But Julie and the girls helped.

A pile of granite rock on a driveway.

While in Evant we picked up a bunch of yucca and cactus. Not much variety out there. Obviously grazing has left pretty much only stuff that cows and deer don’t eat. But we brought some back to p ot and get ready for the front yard.
5 twist-leaf yuccas in ports and 3 prickly pears in pots sitting on top of a dead flowerbed full of asian jasmine.

This week I’m focusing on leveling the path. I’m work mornings and nights. This project was bigger than I expected. Gotta rent a sod cutter and buy some decomposed granite for this weekend.

A view of a blue Scio xB car parked in a driveway. It is flanked by a suburban front yard with some of the grass pulled out.

Not a lot of interesting work yesterday. Both my mom and dad came over and helped pull up some grass. We’re now about ¾ done with the South side of the yard.

So in the spirit of doing landscaping projects, I noticed yesterday that there was a massive dead branch in one tree in the backyard. Last night we had a rainstorm and that tree basically appears to have exploded. It fell apart. So we spent today scrambling to find someone to cut it down. And worrying about the cost.

A tree that has been nearly split in two pulling down a fence.

And I moved almost a ton of pavers today. At the end I was cleaning up. We had one extra paver and it completely fell apart while I was attempting to lift it. Lovely cut and bruise on my middle finger. Fun day. But we got a bunch of grass out. We got all the pavers moved. We got some free river rock lined up. Tomorrow I have to level the pavers and move out some more grass.

Pavers on top of landscape fabric looking horribly unlevel.

Spent the morning pulling back out the existing brick border and concrete pavers. I think those pavers were cast in place. They’re super heavy and weighted oddly.

A front path with no front path. Just dirt in the shape of a path.

The second picture is my boneyard after putting everything back there. The majority of the pavers and yellow bricks on the left came out of the front yard this morning.

Two stacks of gray concrete pavers. In the background a stack of yellow decorative bricks.

This afternoon we’re going to try to get the landscape fabric and new pavers down and start pulling out grass.

Front of a non-descript suburban house. A crispy yellow saint augustine lawn covers the front yard.

So here is the beginning. This is what my yard looked like when I applied for the City of Austin’s Landscape Conversion Incentive Program. By November 15th I’m expected to rip out all the grass and replace it with something. I cannot plant replacement plants yet.

Plan for the front yard. On front left are blooming groundcover, grasses, butterfly garden, trees. It is edged by cactus clumps. On the right are grasses and a butterly garden. More cactus clumps and two mequite trees.

One of the big issues I had with this conversion is that there are very few examples of entire front yard conversions. Most xeric designs involve turf with bordering xeric flowerbeds. Very few are a large standard suburban lot with no grass. And most of those are in Arizona and look a bit spare. So this plan is very much an experiment.

At this point we are still very open to conversion ideas. Feel free to attach any photos or ideas you find inspiring in the comments.