Backyard blitz

During the past few weeks I have had lots of men crawl under the house. We've had electricians, builders, plumbers and the like...
We bought an Art Deco house last year and it is lovely, albeit in need of some TLC (and a lick of paint on the inside - think brown meets pink, green and white, oh yeah - blue too). The drought has cause quite a bit of cracking in the kitchen which, to coin a phrase, fully sucks.
I saw a bumper sticker once that said 'The definition of poverty is owning a horse', I would like to change the 'r' in horse to a 'u'.
Pretty much, it will cost a squillion to fix the cracks so for the moment we are turning a blind eye. However, we have made some positive moves on the asbestos front. Asbestos man came round today and has removed all the nastiness from the back shed. YAY! My FIL and Mr will be a force to reckon with on Saturday as they demolish the rest of the shed and do some serious weed wacking in the backyard. After all the crap is gone, we can finally plant the backyard and make it look all pretty. I'm thinking lime tree, orange tree, plant another lemon tree (our house came with an ELT - established lemon tree) plus lots of other edible stuff. Maybe a compost somewhere? And pretty flowers too! I have an awesome companion planting book so I'll need to read up for some inspiration.
The yard will look so big without the asbestos 'studio'. Only trouble is that the previous owners were a little gung ho with concrete. So there isn't any grass out there. Maybe fake turf is the answer? No. That would shred Herbie's crawling knees wouldn't it.