(Some of you have been waiting for this blog. Some of you probably can’t believe I’m wasting your time making you read this blog, because really, could there BE a less interesting topic to blog on? I don’t think you want to challenge me here, because I’m pretty sure I COULD find something less interesting to blog on, and then where would we be?? Point is, my blog is about what’s going on in my life… and lately this is mostly what has been going on. If you actually DO read it, you’ll see that most of it isn’t eyeball-searingly boring… and a couple parts are sorta kinda funny… and there are pictures, for those of you who are looking for landscaping ideas. So there you go… thanks for muddling through this Blahg; I’ll try to do something interesting next week. Until then, here it is: The Yardwork Blog)
We’ve been doing Yardwork. Woo hoo! Stop the presses! Get this on the news. The excitement is unbelieveable. The crowd is going wild!
Okay. Not exciting. Got it.
But necessary. A necessary evil. Or better yet, a necessary to prevent evil. Because if you don’t do yardwork, you will literally lose your yard. The weeds, the branches, the bushes… everything out there will GROW (imagine that!) until it all takes over and you are left with a jungly, entwined green mush. We have seen the mush. We have fought the mush. We are mush battle weary.
We paid someone a pretty penny 3 years ago to design our pool landscaping. It looked good for about a year. By the second year everything she had put in had grown to such a massive scale, it wasn’t pretty anymore.
We do not have a big yard, we do not have a big pool, we should NOT have had such big plants surrounding it. And I mean BIG. Seriously, there were a couple of plants that grew to 8 feet by 6 feet, which equates to leggy and giant and sprawling. The flowers on one of the plants were as big as my head and I am NOT exaggerating. The plant itself was bigger than the hot tub that it sat behind and was supposed to enhance. I called it Seymour, in reference to Little Shop of Horrors (yes, I know the plant’s name wasn’t Seymour, but that’s the name everyone associates with that movie… well, those of you that have seen the movie… I realize that reference might be a bit obscure; I can live with that).
Eventually we dug Seymour up and moved him over behind the trampoline against the fence, where we could keep an eye on him. He looks more in scale with the trampoline, although we fear for the safety of the dogs now. Cuz in late summer when he’s in full scary bloom he looks huuuuuungry. I’ll take a picture later in the summer. Check back. And be sure to count the dogs.
Over the last year we have removed probably 60% of what the landscaper had put in the back by the pool. We’ve kept all of the trees, and most of the bushes, and some of the groundcover, and a couple of the flowers that survived. The rest has either died, been ripped out angrily, or been relocated to the side yards or other parts of the backyard. And some died BECAUSE they were relocated.
We spent almost an entire weekend in May pulling weeds, trimming the hedges, removing giant ugly things, cutting down limbs and thinning the wildly growing groundcover. When we were done it looked really nice, but a little sparse, so we filled in some areas with one hydrangea and 2 small boxwoods relocated from the front yard, 2 small knockout rose bushes, some annuals that are forbidden to grow taller than 10 inches, and a few clay pots with small annuals.
During the process, Mike and I both accrued many scrapes, cuts, bruises and sunburns. At one point I almost succumbed to heatstroke… I could feel that woozy feeling, so I tore off my shoes and socks and jumped into the pool with all of my clothes on to cool down before I passed out. Whew. Close one.
On the second day of that same weekend, I succeeded in actually knocking Riley into the pool. I turned around to stand up by the edge of the pool, just as she was walking up to me and—BAM—right in she went. She had the presence of mind to grab for the edge as she was falling, so only her lower half went in… but her little belly got some flagstone scrapings and her little mind got a little freaked out. SO sorry, baby girl!!
Anyway here are a few pics of our newly cleaned up backyard area, right after we finished.
These are the lounge chairs that you can actually sit in and not be attacked by either Seymour or the 6 foot diametered grass plant with wicked sharp fronds that used to be behind the spa. Same thing if you sit on the spa ledge. Pool without pain. It’s a good thing.
This is the weeded, cleaned up section that was totally overrun with weeds. The bushes were out of control, the trees were drooping… you couldn’t even see that little red Japanese maple when we started… I almost forgot it was over there:
This is that same shot, but I backed it up so you can see the tanning ledge (is that what it’s called?) that the kids are always standing on to play in the water:
Okay, how about the tanning ledge from THIS angle, without the glare from the sun distorting everything. That dark shadow in the bottom of the pool is the pool cleaner that runs along the bottom of the pool and is magnetically attracted to my feet… freakin’ thing bites my feet EVERY TIME we get in the pool and it is running… nobody ELSE gets bit by the thing. Interestingly enough, we have the exact opposite situation regarding mosquitoes:
These trees were cut back as one of the main trunk/limbs was almost laying on the ground… horizontal limbs just don’t work so well:
And here you can see where we got brave and relocated that hydrangea from the front yard to the backyard. It looked nice first thing each day, after the cool temps of the night and early morning, but in the afternoon and evening it looked pretty droopy and heat exhausted. Here it is the morning after it was put in:
Not any landscaping here, but we do have more seating out by the pool now AND, because both the flagstone and the patterned concrete are so stinkin’ hot, we ran a mister line over the outside of the arbor… see that white tubing line? Yup, that’s a mister, mister:
And this picture I took just to show you where I was when I bumped Riley into the pool. About 2 feet to the right of the waterfall, on that flagstone ledge… or, uh, OFF that flagstone ledge:
By Day 3 we realized the hydrangea was looking way too wilty way too much of the day. These are NOT heat hearty plants by any means and they cannot bear a lot of direct hot sun. I’m pretty sure I might be part hydrangea.
Since it was looking so sad and droopy, we relocated it yet again, to an 85% shaded area. If it died this time, we knew it wouldn’t be because of location. Re-location, perhaps, but not its final location. See its curled up leaves and hanging flower heads, before we moved it?
We moved it over to the far left by the wrought iron fence and the next day it looked a little perkier. We were hoping it had found a happy place. In its place we planted some of these little purple things that swear they will only grow to 10 inches tall, and this pretty little pink knockout rose bush. Looky there, you can still see the little rosebush’s tag. I wonder if we ever took that off, before the sprinklers came on. Ew.
We kept checking the status of the hydrangea. Each afternoon it looked sadder and more scraggly. Each morning it managed to look a little perkier than it had the night before, but never quite as perky as it had started. The last two days it looked as bad in the morning as it had the previous evenings. Finally we had to stop fooling ourselves. That beautiful hydrangea wasn’t going to survive. A former skeleton of itself, we knew we had neither the skills nor the patience to deal with it any longer. Eight days after it was transplanted, we called its official time of death and hurled it into the big can. Here is its final picture:
I don’t want to hear anyone saying that it doesn’t look THAT bad; couldn’t we have given it a few more days? No. It was dying. And Mike saying, “You know, I think that one big root that I cut through might have been an important one” pretty much cemented the deal for me.
In its place we bought 2 brand new, smaller hydrangeas and put them way back against the fence line, about half the yard apart. 95% shade. When you check back later in the summer, I’ll give you a status update on those, along with Seymour.
As a special treat, because I was really mourning that beautiful plant that had taken 5 years to blossom and mature, and yet only 8 days to die, we bought this Bouganvillea and potted it inside the seating area. Anyone giving odds on how long it will take us to kill this thing?
Then, the next weekend, because I felt things needed more color, we went out and bought a few more annuals to fill in some of the bare spots and the ceramic pots. AND we bought a Mandevillea (only cuz they were all out of the Bougainvilleas) to pot and put on the patio. AND I got out my paints and painted some color onto the terra cotta pots around the pool. AND we got our front yard crew to go back there and replace all of our cheapy cypress mulch with their better grade hardwood mulch. AND… nope that’s it.
Mostly we went out and got some more stuff because I’d seen some pics of a girl named Kim’s totally AWESOME backyard and was feeling really inadequate. I mean look at this pool shed alone. I totally have shed envy. And I’m pretty sure my feelings for the gorgeous potted plants is illegal in more than a few southern states.
Gah, maybe I shouldn’t have posted that, cuz my backyard is looking kinda puny again. Anyway, now it looked like this. Hook these four shots together and you’ll see a panoramic view of the back part of the yard, something my camera couldn’t capture all in one shot:
And the two new potted plants on the patio part. Say that three times fast. Yellow Hibiscus and Deep Pink Mandevillea.
Remember, all those plants around the pool are all three-week old, still mostly baby plants, so they’ll be really pretty when they mature. And once a week, I show them that picture of Kim’s backyard as an incentive to bloom and grow and spread out a little. But not a LOT; I don’t want to have to prune anything for a long time.
And guess what? We got a bug up our collective butts (when you’ve been married this long, that happens quite often) regarding the size of the waterfall feature on the pool. It seemed okay in the plan 3 years ago, but we decided it might look nicer with some more rock built onto it. So next month we’re having a crew come in and exend the rocks on each side to make it more visually “interesting” (I believe that is the official term). Later in the summer when I update you on Seymour and the hydrangeas I’ll take some pictures so you can see if the plants survived our Black Thumb treatment and are thriving, plus I’ll show you the newly designed rock feature. My gift to you. And you thought Christmas was a long way off….
So backyard was done. It’s not too flashy, but it is cleared up and cleaned out and has a little color to it. Compared to the Jungle Blues we were singing, it’s a refreshing song choice.
Our next project was the frontyard. Remember how we lost our trees in that windstorm? Well, those trees had served a number of purposes: homes for the birds and squirrels, a perfect spot to plant spring tulips… and house camoflauge. The fact that we had some really sad landscaping up next to the house became glaringly obvious when the giant trees were no longer standing to block said landscaping. A lot of dying/dead things. A lot of scrubby looking things.
And not enough of anything to really downplay the fact that our house is basically just a giant red box set back on too much front lawn.
We were completely unnerved by the thought of tackling the front yard. I mean, people SEE the front yard. So we took a chance and called in a professional. Again. Different professional. We’d seen two backyards that he had designed and they looked great, so we were hoping to have the same magic worked on our yard.
Here are a couple of Before pictures, to show you what he had to work with. Ignore the hitch hiking girl; she’s still with us:
The plan the landscaper showed us had only the lillies in the front beds and the yaupon holly in the right center window being retained. Everything else was being stripped out. Everything else. And even the lillies weren’t staying where they were; they were being relocated. The beds were to be extended to be fuller/wider on both sides and also come down the front walkway. Plus the beds on the right side would loop out and we were to have two big trees on that side of the yard. Pretty trees that turned yellow and orangey-red, respectively. Ones that wouldn’t split and fall apart in a windstorm. Please Oh Please Oh Please….
Other than the two boxwoods and the hydrangea that we had taken to the backyard, nothing else was useable by us. And we only used the hydrangea for 8 days. Wes did come over and dig up 6 of the large boxwoods and one small Japanese red maple for use in their front yard. But the rest of our front landscaping was destined for the mulcher, I feared. Sorry, old sad landscaping, you served your yard well, but your time had come to be replaced.
In the five weeks between deciding to have someone draw up a plan and having the actual project started, we did nothing to the front yard except mow and edge the lawn. Nothing else. So during those five weeks weeds grew in the beds, the crepe myrtles grew extra legs and tentacles, and the shrubs got overgrown. And we ignored it all. What was the purpose? Why trim a tree that was going to be completely removed in a few weeks? Why pull weeds in a bed when the whole bed was going to be turned over, resodded, replanted and remulched?
Up close, things looked like this the day before the guys came to start the project. On the right:
On the left. Notice all of the “greenery” under the skimpy Texas Purple sage? Those would be Weeds. Fairly photogenic weeds, but weeds nonetheless:
To the rest of the world I’m sure it looked like we had abandoned the yard. Gee, the neighbors who drove by were probably thinking, they lose two trees and that’s IT? The yard goes to hell in a handbasket? They’ve given up all hope? I wanted to post a sign in the yard:
No Judgments, Please: Yard About To Be Re-Landscaped
But Mike liked the idea of the element of surprise. Well that and he thought the sign would have been desperate and tacky. Yeah? So? I’m pretty sure those are two of my signature qualities.
But we didn’t put up a sign and eventually the project got underway. The project got underway two days later than I thought it would, but don’t get me started. What is it with Contractor’s Time anyway? Their calendar is different than ours? Must everything be thought of as -ish? 9:00-ish? Tuesday-ish??
I SAID don’t get me started.
Day One was pretty uneventful, other than the fact that they were actually out there doing something. Doing this at first, mostly:
And more of the same over here:
But by the time the three guys left, 6 hours after they had started on Day One, we had this:
And more of the same over here:
All the plants had been ripped out, except for the 3 trees, and two of them would be taken out the next working day… I hoped. I guess they had a different kind of crew to do that? And the edging was left in piles around the place. We said it looked like new construction again.
Or at the very least, a big red box set back on a little bit less front lawn. Luckily we got to the sod they had flipped over and used it to cover the two gaping holes where the fallen trees had once stood. Kind of circular grave markers going on there. The new sod is what we were trying to water in the picture with the sprinklers going; we were NOT trying to make a mud pit out there. That was just a bonus.
They came back the next working day, on time and ready for action. It was a day that they made quite a bit of progress, and when it was all over, you could fully see the shape the new landscaping was going to take. This time there were 5 guys. And when they left, 7 hours after they started, here’s what the yard looked like:
Head on:
To the left, to the left:
To the right, to the right:
So nothing overwhelming… no big AHHH factor, cuz there are no plants yet… BUT they did remove the two crepe myrtles that were on the far left and far right of the house, they did begin the postioning and mortaring of the new chopped stone border, they did set those two maple trees up on the right… and they did something we didn’t even know they were going to do. Attached to the bottom of each of our 4 downspout gutters on the front of the house is now one of these:
See that black drain hose at the base of the downspout? It goes underground as a long piece of drain and comes out in the lawn at one of these:
I mean, I saw “extend drain downspout if necessary” on the written part of the proposal, but I just thought that meant sticking on another piece of metal downspout… not doing a cool underground thingie to take the water out to the lawn. Man, I reeeeally hope those things work. Cuz right now I’m envisioning four big lakes bubbling up in the yard every time it rains.
Must. Stop. Envisioning.
The next day their mission was to take out and distribute this big ole pile of dirt, which Riley found highly entertaining, especially with the flags to wave. She was having a big giant dirt parade. Strike up John Phillips Sousa and we’ll march barefoot down the sidewalk and…uuuuuh… does anyone know where that flag came from? Sure hope it’s not an important marker:
So the 5 guys spent 7 hours moving that dirt around, one slow wheelbarrowful at a time. And adding some bagged lawn mix to the beds, which seriously smelled so bad that I got up twice to do a butt sniff check on both kids. I hadn’t been outside yet (and think how strong this smell was, that I thought it was actually something INSIDE the house) so I couldn’t figure out what the smell was. All I knew was that I was tipoe-ing around the house, prepared at any moment to step in a pile of fresh dog crap, left by a dog with some disease that was eating his colon.
It wasn’t until I went outside to take my daily pictures that the rank odor smacked me right in the face and made me say “OOOOH, THAT’S what that smell was.” Well it made me say other things as well, but that was the underlying theme.
I mean, I know the smell of manure. I don’t really even MIND the smell of manure. Not that I want it as a constant companion in my everyday life, but I can tolerate a whiff of it now and again. But this smell was not just manure. It was Manure And So Much More. Maybe that was the name on the bags of stuff they were spreading around; I never looked that closely.
It had the livestock smell, but it also had the added bonus smell of dead sealife. Spoiled shrimp, maybe. With some eau de workout-tshirt-left-too-long-in-the-hamper thrown in. Plus a hint of random man ass. A potent mixture that I assumed was being put into the soil to make the plants look good. Surely the landscaper wasn’t some guy with a bizarre sense of humor. (”Watch how I torment these people with my completely useless specially formulated Bag O’ Stink…muahahahaha.”)
Anyway, here’s what things looked like after Day #3. Head on view. Hey, where did that guy come from?
Closer up, head on… ain’t it purty, all curvy like?
To the left, to the left. Mmmmm, can’t ya just smell it?
To the right, to the right… hey, there’s that guy again:
Here’s that extra new tree section:
And here’s what the other side of the house looks like, just for grins and giggles. Part of the proposal is to trim those ginormous photinia bushes down, in and out. We put those three bushes in about 6 years ago, and they have grown like crazy monster plants. Right after we put them in, we started hearing all about the diseases and decay and early death associated with photinias. The lanscape guy reinforced this idea and said he doesn’t put them in anymore because they don’t live long or grow very big.
Guess what? These photinias are laughing in his FACE:
We were in the homestretch now. On the next to last day of work, the guys brought in all of the plants and started to put them in, along with some flagstone, river rock, lava stone and boulders for some “interest” (see, there’s that word again) along the sidewalk up by the house. The beds were “raised and contoured” so that the landscaping would be visible from the street on a drive-by. Unlike our old landscape that was put in flat.
Here’s the head-on view. Far away. Is this tilted? Am I crooked?
And closer up where you can see they were still messing with one of the sprinkler heads there in the very front (see that dug up area?) so they weren’t able to put in the two flats of blue annuals that will fill that area. 
A wide view to the left, to the left:
And a wide view, to the right, to the right. Here you can see some buckets of various rocks and stones to be used on the last day:
Then you can see how they started to put in the rocks/boulders along the last section of sidewalk leading to the house. But only some of the various stones and only on the left side so far:
The right side was even more of a rock work in progress. Kind of the Lone Boulder Look at this point. And actually that whole section looked pretty messy with the bag of mulch there and the random flats of flowers and the one plant still in its pot and the flag… the flag? I have a gas line right there? I don’t THINK so:
The first thing we did notice with these rocks is that they are of GREAT “interest” to Riley G. She kept picking up the nice smooth white stones and looking at them, dropping them and/or chucking them across the pile of rubble. And some of them are fairly big. I think she sees a future of rock play. I think I see a battle of wills… and possibly broken toes.
And so, finally, on Thursday, they finished. They fixed the wonky sprinkler head, put in two flats of annuals (scaevola, if you’re interested) and laid out the various rocks. And here, after a much needed lawn mowing and edging, is the finished product:
To the left, to the left… won’t that blue scaevola be pretty when it spreads out over the summer?
And from the left… the one thing they forgot to do was tame that photinia into submission, so a crew will come back tomorrow to do that. I ain’t waiting on the pics for THAT thing:
To the right, to the right…same thing over here with the scaevola looking small now, but having room to grow… as with the pink mini rosebushes: 
All the way to the right… notice the one bad section of lawn–that’s one of the “grave markers” I was talking about for the two fallen trees… the grass hasn’t “taken” there yet:
And from the right… kind of a weird light dappling effect:
And there you have it. Springtime sweatshop at our house. When it was all done, Ryan asked when it “would look good” and after I finished beating him with the leaf blower, I explained that it was just what we wanted. We had plants put in that were new and different from most of the garden variety (so to speak) plants in the rest of the neighborhood. We had nice contoured beds that showcased those new plants. And we could see the ground in between the plants. No big green jungly mush. 3 years from now we might be singing the Jungle Blues again, but for now we’re happy.
Happy mostly because it’s all done. So we’ll just kick back and enjoy our new outdoor oases (oasises?) all summer long. Kick back? Us? Why am I having a hard time convincing myself of that…?
