This week's checklist

I'm anxiously counting down the days until it is officially after the last frost date (March 10) and I can plant! It is working out well that I still have a lot to do to get ready or I might not be able to hold out. The good news is that we have a wheelbarrow now.

In the next two weeks I hope to:
1. Finish moving pebbles from the back triangle to the utility side of the house.
2. Move pebbles in shade garden to the other side of the house.
3. Decide on a paint color for the door.
4. Clean the patio furniture.
5. Get some plants for my front porch pots.
6. Figure out a strategy for containing the shade garden.
7. Power wash deck- if we can get a power washer!

Hopefully there will be an "after" picture soon...

Weekend Progress

I have a great husband. Great great. Not only is he currently sacrificing his nighttime sleep as we attempt to night wean the little man and baking homemade bread during the day, but he's been cooking dinner every night and did a bunch of yard work while G and I were visiting my sister in Atlanta this weekend.

He moved the (heavy) bench upstairs and the chairs around front. He weeded the front yard (again), the back triangle (again), mowed the heck out of our lawn, and trimmed some bushes in the front. We have a battery powered trimmer/edger and he went through 4 battery charges edging and trimming the lawn. He hoped to power wash our deck, but you can only use a power washer Sundays for our even address and Home Depot was already rented out.

I love it, it looks great!

Progress:

This shot encourages me. I'm sure you're thinking, "but it's mostly weeds except for the bald spot up front."  That's true, but it's better than before!

Atlanta Weekend

Grayson and I went to Atlanta this weekend! Here's some of what we were up to:

And the aftermath:

Front porch

Here's our front porch today:

Changes I want:

1. Paint the door - blue?
2. Move the bench to the upstairs porch and put the Adirondack chairs up front.
3. Get some plants for the pots.

I'm not sure when I'll get to this- we'll see!

Veggies

Our yard has so many trees in it that the vast majority of it is shaded during the day. This is great for many things, but not for the vegetable garden I have been wanting since the day we moved in!

About a week ago, Andrew and I finally made it happen. The back corner is the only spot that gets enough sun (and even then we'll have to see how it goes). It's not ideal because it is no where close to the hose, but I'm willing to lug water back there, so we're trying it out!

I'm planning to do tomatoes, peppers (sweet and hot), strawberries, cilantro, and basil. We'll see how it goes!

Hubby Brag

Andrew ran the Austin marathon in under 3 hours this weekend! I'm so proud of him- what a great first 26.2!

What a difference a day makes

My parents were in town this weekend and we spent a lot of time outside! On Sunday my mom headed up the charge in the front yard and it's almost weed free now (she was very disappointed this morning to find one we missed). It looks great!

On Monday my dad and I worked out in the back triangle while my mom weeded under the trees in the back. It was a lot of work. My dad turned the soil with a pitchfork, then we pulled out the weeds we could see and moved rocks, turned again, pulled weeds, and then raked the area to even it out. We found a lot of weed block and a larger area than I was aware of had pebbles in it. This was good and bad- once you got the weed block up you had a pretty clear area, but getting it up was rough. We moved pebbles bucket by bucket to the side of the house to re-pebble that area. I think I'm getting a wheelbarrow before we do the area under the trees!

The Before:

The After:

The good news is that the soil looks great- my dad said there was some peat moss already in there and the dirt is in good shape- not compacted or anything. I can't wait to plant!

From my todo's:

1. Get some of the random rocks and pebbles out of there. We have them out of the area we got to, but there are still more to go! 
2. Pull up my carefully tended weeds.
3. Get the old weed block out of there.
4. Turn soil and try to level the area.
5. Decide what to do with the fire shrubs that we planted last year.
6. Amend the soil as necessary.
7. Wait for March so we can plant!

Status:

RIP Shrimp Plant

Since we moved in the front garden has had one shrimp plant next to the walkway. Too close to the walkway.  It was just stuck right against the porch and right against the edge. It looked misplaced. Also, I didn't really like it. I think it looks kinda droopy, and we already have enough droopy going on in the front with our walnut tree. But it survived the summer and the winter, so it got to stay.

Last week I had a little pent up frustration one day. Nothing major, but I was in a funk. I moped around for the morning, I avoided people for a while. And then I saw the shrimp plant. I decided its time had come.

For a little plant (it was only about a foot high) it had some serious roots. I did some digging and got pretty dirty. I pulled and it didn't budge. I had to dig as much as could get to between it and the sidewalk to cut roots. I had to do dig under it and cut roots. Finally after almost 40 minutes, I pulled and out it came!

So then I planted some geraniums by our sidewalk. I could place them where I wanted because I didn't have to work around that dumb plant. They looked balanced and nice. It was among the most satisfying hours I've had in the yard to date.

Of course, that weekend it got really cold. I had to put blankets on my poor new flowers to keep them from dying. It's okay - it was worth it!

The back triangle

I talked to my dad over Christmas about the yard, and he suggested we get a small "beachhead" that we focus on so that we can have some success. We picked the back triangle because it is 1) a contained area and 2) very visible when you look at the backyard from the house.

I get a weekly email from a local nursery, and one week in early February they suggested that if you put clear plastic over an area it will heat it up and you can kill everything growing there without the use of pesticide.

I tried this. It appears to have been a pretty massive failure. I seem to have created a lovely greenhouse for the weeds in the back that have kept them nice and warm during freezes, kept them very well watered, and generally kept them very much alive.

This weekend my parents will be down and my dad and I are going to attack the back triangle and hopefully get it ready for planting after the last frost date. Here's what needs to be done:

1. Get some of the random rocks and pebbles out of there.
2. Pull up my carefully tended weeds.
3. Get the old weed block out of there.
4. Turn soil and try to level the area.
5. Decide what to do with the fire shrubs that we planted last year.
6. Amend the soil as necessary.
7. Wait for March so we can plant!

What we've done so far...

Our yard is a little overwhelming. When we moved in, we hired the neighbor kids to mow the lawn for the rest of the summer and fall. I decided to wait a year to do much with the gardens to see what the plants turned out to be.

That was a year and a half ago. So we've done a few things, but not much. This is the year of the yard! I know it is going to take some time (years) to make this yard as good as it could be, but all the more reason to get started.

So far we've only done a few things:

1. Buy lawn equipment. We know have the full suite of lawn equipment- lawn mower, trimmer/edger, and blower. It's a small step, but an important one.

2. Get our large Live Oak in the back trimmed. It is a majestic tree, and we want to take good care of it. It appeared that it had only had minor trimming since the house was built in 1999. We used Nicky The Tree Tender. He had 6 guys out there and they took a ton out. The tree had started to grow over itself and the branches were really intertwined. I would bet that no one else would be able to tell a difference- the tree just looks like it should look now.

3. Remove some plants in the front garden. We had a lot of  Hamelia patens in our front garden. A lot. You couldn't really see the front porch (as seen in this shot). So we took out two of them. For the time being, we transplanted them to the back triangle. This seems to have set back their growth quite a bit. That is a good thing. We also removed some of the random plants that had been tried in the front garden and stuck.We had some purple coneflowers, assorted bushes, and other things. My biggest lesson in the front yard so far has been that it is in real need of editing. It is not cohesive at all.

4. Remove some trees in the backyard. Andrew and I took advantage of the the large brush pick up that Austin scheduled last month and cut down some "trees" in the back. There were some failed crepe myrtles, some live oak saplings, and some other things that we weren't even sure what they were. None of them were more than 3 inches in diameter at the widest spot, but getting rid of them has helped me feel better.

Yard Layout

This is not to scale, but is a basic layout of our property. It is a quarter acre.

Issues (Front yard):
- Walnut tree is too close to the house
- The middle of the yard has an area the sprinklers don't reach well so we get a dead spot in the summer
- Garden area has some crazy plants and the side is out of control
- We have fire ants

Good things (Front yard):
- Things we've tried to grow in the garden have done relatively well
- Grass is in pretty good shape
- Garden has a nice border and a nice shape

Issues (Back yard)
- "Grass" is mostly weeds
- Some areas have pebbles, but need more- over the years the pebbles have gotten thin
- The whole backyard gets a lot of shade (actually a good thing unless you are trying to grow flowers)
- Area to the right of the sidewalk has no sprinklers and is mostly dirt and the occasional weeds
- The patio has a lot of mildew on it
- The back triangle is chock full of weeds
- We have fire ants
- We get rats in the shed
- The yard is very uneven
- The sprinklers were turned off in front of the patio so that is mostly dirt

Good things (Back yard)
- We have an awesome live oak that is older than the state of Texas!
- The back triangle gets enough sun for flowers (I think)
- The sprinklers all work

Our Yard: The problem

We bought our house in July 2010 when I was 6 months pregnant with our first child. Part of why we liked the house was the yard- it is very large for the neighborhood. However, it needs A LOT of work. Not much happened the first year as we watched to see what the plants turned out to be. Now we are trying to turn our yard into something we will be excited to have Grayson play in!

The yard before: