Michael Murillo enjoys life with his family in Charleston, South Carolina. He is presently employed
as a factory worker there, and enjoys writing part-time to help pay for accessories for his antique car.
I have had many backyard landscape ideas for quite a long time now, but my job has kept me so completely busy that I have been unable to do the work that I wanted to, to make my yard look great. Although some of my backyard landscape ideas were rather simple and conventional - such as a brick path through the garden, or a wooden patio for barbecues - even these were beyond me because I had such a limited amount of time.
All of my friends would always tell me that I was a workaholic, and that I simply needed to cut back on all the stuff that I was doing to give myself time for backyard landscaping, as well as all of my other hobbies, but I simply could not make myself do it. When, at the age of 54, I had my first heart attack however, I realized that it was not just a matter of giving myself more time to enjoy the things that I loved to do. Taking time off was really a matter of life and death to me.
I am one of those guys who always need to feel like I am getting something accomplished, so when I cut back to a manageable 40 hours a week, I would use my added free time to implement some of my backyard landscape ideas. I started with what I thought would be a simple backyard landscaping project: I built a fountain. Originally, I had thought that it would run through the middle of the garden, crossed by the footpath, but since I had no idea when I would get around to making that footpath, I decided to put it at the end as well.
Since this was the first of my backyard landscape ideas that I was to actually put into practice, it was my opportunity to make all of those mistakes that you make when you are trying something new and unfamiliar. And boy, did I make a few. I thought that this would be an easy backyard landscape idea to build, but in fact a fountain is pretty hard if you want a stream to. You have to build and maintain a filter, and put in gravel to trap leaves and stop too much water from leaking. It took three tries before I finally got it to work the way I wanted. Next time I try building my backyard landscape ideas, I think I am going to do a better job of planning first.
