Yard Maintenance

Apparently, long weekends for me have gone from lazy to busy.

(Non-Orthodox) Easter weekend was spent cleaning and reducing the size of the bed by the mailbox, and starting to thin out the hosta on the front walk.

Memorial Day weekend was spent installing ceiling fans and kitchen drawers.

Now, 4th of July weekend was spent cleaning out the bed on the back of the house under DJ's window and the lone bed furthest from the house by the fence, changing the furnace filters, and forceably removing the ivy that was taking over the azalea by the street as well as the wild strawberry vine trying to inhabit our fence line.

With Elektra's baptism looming quickly on the horizon and the likely possibility that the person I usually hire to help me care for the beds won't be available, I started to get the yard ready on my own. I actually plan to take a few days off during the week to finish these projects if I don't finish them in the next few weekends.

The first project is converting the bed by the deck and under DJ's window back into grass. This required removing all of the foliage growing in it. It was initially cleaned out last August, but I hadn't gotten to it. I figured it could lay fallow, no big deal. How wrong I was. Mother Nature deposited all sorts of seeds into that bed, and all sorts of things had grown in it. At least two of those "volunteers" were over 6 ft tall. So the trusty shovel and I went to work digging out the roots of these pesky plants. It took me 2 hours to get through that mess, and I wasn't even very diligent in getting everything! Serves me right for being a slacker.

Now that it's been cleaned, I will see if anything crops back up in the next week. If so, RoundUp and I will join forces. Actually, RoundUp and I will be joining forces sooner than that. I have tasked Steve with going to Gnome Despot this week to pick up another sprayer (so that we don't spray down our tires with RoundUp!) and more RoundUp. Then I'm going to liberally spray down the back fence line. I will have no remorse, and I will take no prisoners. It's all going to die....!

Anyway, back to the bed behind the house. I will dig an area half a foot deep, two feet wide, and the length of the house. Then I'll put down lawn fabric or some other kind of weed preventative fabric, and then put rocks down on top of that. I will use the bricks that currently outline the bed to outline that little "walk" to help contain the rocks. I also have to buy a window well cover and find a way to either attach it to the house permanently or weight it so it doesn't fly away and break like our last one did. I'll also clean the window that it'll cover... it's pretty gross right now! The rest of the bed will be seeded with grass. I think this needs to be done before the baptism, hands down. Even if grass hasn't grown by then, just for visual appeal, it needs to look like something useful!

I also cleaned the bed furthest from the house, too. This required eliminating wild strawberry. Man, does that have some nasty thorns! After cutting it with pruning shears, I used RoundUp on the bit of leftover stem/trunk of the plant in hopes of killing it dead. I know RoundUp is supposed to be used on the leaves so that it can get absorbed and then move down into the root system, but the plants were invading the bed and overgrowing into the lawn. They had to be eliminated. I didn't want DJ touching them and getting hurt!

I also removed the new foliage from the trees in that section, and trimmed the tall bush (name is escaping me right now!!) that 's in the middle of the bed with the pruning shears. I say "trimmed". What I really did is hack. Pretty much all new growth got hacked off. It's not shaped very well, but at least it's not overtaking anything. I also removed any new maple trees whose seeds decided the bed was perfect for germinating.

That bed now looks great, and I'm very happy with it.

Then I went to the front of the house to the azalea closest to the road. There was some kind of vine/ivy thing that was taking over this poor bush. I thought that it wouldn't take me long to cut it out, but it definitely took me longer than I anticipated! By the time I was done, this ivy/vine pile I dragged to where I disposed of it was so big that it was 6 feet long and probably 2 feet tall. It was huge. And now my azalea looks BARE. It doesn't look dead, but it doesn't look happy. I'm going to have to get a ladder and trim this azalea down big time and hope that it comes back fuller next spring! Once again, that's what I get for not dealing with it sooner...

I still have to chop off the flowers on the hosta on the front walk, trim back all of the bushes around the whole house, and clean out the bed by the shed. I also have to cut back the rhododedren big time! It's HUGE!

I'm nowhere near ready to have a big outdoor party yet, but I'm definitely on the right path!