The progression of our outdoor room

Jin and I spent the entire long weekend rearranging our "outdoor room" by putting in some stepping stones, new paths and paving, ripping out weeds, and planting the small variety of plants and flowers I bought. I found an old photo I took of our backyard, I think it was the day after a party we had. It feels like an entirely different space to me. When we first moved into our apartment, our backyard was a mess. It was a small piece of land with really tall weeds that would sprout out every summer. And, it was home to an old, broken stove. I had no idea how to handle it, and at the time, I was too busy getting through my undergraduate degree. Once I graduated, I convinced Jin and our landlady that the backyard needed to be inhabited like an outdoor extension to the house (which is not what we were using it for!). So I proposed a patio, and a cleanup. I enlisted the help of my good friend, and we were pretty confident to build a patio, being architecture grads and all, but it still took us 2 weeks from start to finish! I guess drawing isn't anything like construction!

We still need a little more cleanup, and it still looks pretty bare, with little baby plants and shrubs, but I like it so much better than when we first moved in!