Sometimes, I look out the window and I see the beauty of my front yard: fragrant lavender, confetti something or others, a rose or two, and a variety of blooming hedges. Lately, however, I look out the window and I see dying grass, a woody overgrown lavender tumbleweed, gopher mounds and thorny, sickly roses.
It's not that the beauty isn't there anymore. And it's not that my view on life has become bleak. It truly is that I don't know what I'm doing when it comes to gardening and caring for a yard, it shows, and I can't "positive thinking" my way into justifying inaction anymore.
So, to start or not to start, that is the question. And the answer is emphatically yes. The time is now.
Lord, help us all. Terri has taken on a new project.
Photos to come.
I'm loving this blog! And mostly because I've been there and done that, well many times. I know exactly what your envisioning and I am excited for you!! Beautiful flowers and plants. A well trimmed yard that you love to pull up to and gaze at. Waiting for the blooms and having an abundance of hardy flowers! Buying the plants and supplies and reading all the books, drawing out all your plans and plants and dreaming of your conquest. This is all fun and games until you actually bring home the goodies in a truckload from the nursery. And then it's time to get S.T.A.R.T.E.D. Um Ya. This is the preparation nightmare stage of removing weeds, digging dirt to make space, etx. I would be so exhausted, I never got to the fun stuff for that weekend, and back to work it was. It would have to wait until NEXT weekend. Where did I go wrong? My excitement made me forget the preparation stage.
ReplyDelete(1) I finally learned to hire out for the hard stuff, the initial weeding, simple mowing and blowing, which was very inexpensive. Even some of Tori's friends offered for $$ to clean out what used to be a garden. Dig the holes, have them rotor till if you need to. This made me right off the bat motivated for "adding all my ideas" and happy at what I'm looking at, even if it was a wasteland. It was neat and tidy and ready to start the FUN STUFF. I would have it done on a Friday, before I returned home from work! Unless you have a lot of time, Avoid the "dread part" (2) Water, Water Water. A simple thing but I would forget to set the timer when it got hotter and or water with a hose my potted plants. (3) Dog Urine-Especially female dog urine is a killer. A gazillion plants lost to this. But if your aerate the soil around the plants often and use a special type of fertilizer in the most common pee areas, they will live and thrive. Did not know this until I moved to my new place. Couldn't figure out how they kept all the plants so abundant with all the dogs here, until I asked. (4) Keep the mowing and blowing guy coming back or all will be strangled with wandering weeds and crabgrass, that is hard to get out of cement like dirt! Anyways, just my thoughts to lend and look forward to seeing your pictures to come!
Thanks for the great tips! I'm still in the prep stage and promised myself I wouldn't buy a darned thing until the yard is gone. the hard stuff is actually quite therapeutic I'm finding :) I have all summer to strip the yard and make sure the weeds are pretty much gone (pull out the little boogers as soon as they start to grow back) and finish the hardscape. Then the plants in the fall - yea!!
DeleteI'll have to look for the dog pee fertilizer. Backyard has some definite burn spots from Victoria. :(