Landscaping – Page 5 – M O D F R U G A L

It’s Like Watching Grass Grow

Maybe because it IS.

You’ve heard me whinge about the mud around here many times.Â Even though we are a (family) shoes off at the door house…the mud is still caked on all those shoes piled up at the door, and constantly scrubbing them, well, sucks.Â Since we do not anticipate anymore backhoes, bobcats and the such, we can finally try and cover up some of that mud with something green.

We seeded the mud at the side a few days before “the rains” came and we figured they all got washed away…how pleasantly surprised were we to realize those little buggers hung in there and took root.Â 16 inches of rain certainly gave them enough water to germinate!

The Minors have been asking, oh, every other day when they can have the tire swing back, and the CC says…”not until it’s ready to mow”….aw Dad!

This is our trashy way of keeping it all from washing away…which for the most part worked.

It seemed a bit patchy from all the flooding, so I overseeded it again this past weekend…fingers crossed for some even, lush, green carpet soon.Â I think I’m getting as excited as the Minors for a “soft place to play” to coin their phrase.

Oh, and my purple basil seeds have germinated…yay!

There’s LOTS of other muddy areas to attend to, but…well…you know….TIME.

Bamboozled with Slats on Mother’s Day

I feel like I can say with reasonable confidence that my fabulous Mother’s Day would be most people’s idea of hell.Â It was a beautiful day…a bit cooler than usual and I decided to go bushwacking….or bamboowacking to be more precise.

I can’t plant anything new because of water restrictions (no irrigation allowed), so it’s a great time to tend to what you have.Â There is a jungle of bamboo just beyond the new retaining walls and it looks as though no one has taken any notice of it in the 33 years since it was planted.

After our 16 inches of rain, I started seeing tons of new culms appear and knew these new volunteers needed attention.Â They couldn’t thrive if I didn’t enter the jungle and clear out all the dead wood and weeds competing for water and nutrients.Â With the ground still so soft and moist, it is the perfect time to pull weeds and weed trees by the roots.Â Garden dorks know how incredibly satisfying this can be.

There’s a lot more dead than alive in there…..

So there’s my jungle…I have a saw and I know how to use it.

I salvaged quite a few good canes for future use…maybe treehouse or compost pile?Â Either way, I had to save them for something.Â The rest….to the curb….

I knew it had to be in here somewhere since I always saw them fly into the jungle…..

A cardinal nest with an egg…I was very careful to leave it undisturbed…I can get the dead canes supporting the nest later after the egg has hatched.

Now these new culms have air circulating around them, and after I feed and mulch them, I think they will be beautiful.Â For the first time, we can walk back there and I think the back end of the treehouse will put you right into the “bamboo forest” with a new path leading to the trail.

So what made the cuts, scrapes and getting slapped in the face by bamboo so fun? I had company….The Minors actually HELPED me by dragging giant bamboo canes down to the road for a little while, or would hang out playing on the walls and talking to me.Â I LOVE it when we are all outside together.Â The CC was with us too working on his own project…..

Remember the old lattice under the front deck/entrance?

Looky….

The CC ripped some of our old salvaged deck boards straight down the middle and attached them with some stainless steel screws we had leftover from the mailbox project.Â We have plenty of deck stain on hand, which brings the total cost of this wall to a whopping $0!!!

That’s what I call an amazing (and frugal) Mother’s Day.

All Decked Out

…and nowhere to go.

They built the back deck at the same time as the wood front steps, but I never showed you the back because I wanted to get it all stained and stylin’ for ya.Â I honestly don’t know when that is going to happen…so…there.

It rains every weekend that I try to rent the pressure washer to clean the old sections of deck.Â When it’s dry, the oak tassels keep falling into the stain…freaking annoying.Â I managed to get those front steps stained by some miracle reprieve in nature…and they aren’t even finished…just good enough for a distance photo!

Here’s where we are….or were, and are, this week.

This was taken during inspection….that corner where the hose is?Â My nemesis.Â We’ve been grading that with mud etc.. to keep water from pooling there, despite the french drains.Â Today’s downpour showed us we were FINALLY successful.Â WAH freakin’ HOO!Â I was hoping for Madonna-esque guns after all that digging…didn’t happen, so I’ll settle for draining water.

There was just a small deck outside the living room, with plenty of mud on either side of it.Â Phil/lipa‘s lair was under this small deck.

And that was the other small deck off the kitchen….

We had to tear off the boards of the living room deck in order to get the new siding done, but we kept the structural supports attached to the foundation since we knew we’d re-build it eventually.

We designed the new retaining wall to act as the support for the new deck.Â The joists run across to the wall and are supported underneath by the new cinder block rather than sinking tons of posts into the ground.

Now we have an L shaped deck that wraps the corner and connects the kitchen and the living room on the outside.Â The dining room is in between with the big windows.

I took these the day they finished, and the snow came the next morning.

Here it is in all its unstained glory…one day, I’ll be able to get this knocked out.

You can see where the old deck ended and the new starts…I’ll pressure wash the old so I can stain it all at once.Â We also hope to replace these railings with the hog panels like in the front,Â but these were already there and in good condition, so, we kept them for the moment.

I took the pictures below last night so you could see the carpet of oak tassels that are falling on us daily.Â It was a nice warm evening and with torrential rains moving in, we knew we’d be stuck inside the rest of the weekend.Â No proper cushions yet…

*UPDATE:Â Boy, was that rain thing an understatement…things are bats**t insane here…

You guys were right – I don’t regret painting the chairs orange…

BTW….That fugly lantern? Best commercial mosquito repellent ever.

We should have bought stock in OFF Power Pads when they first came out, because it’s the only thing that allows us to hang outdoors at night without spraying down.Â They WORK people…and trust me…we’ve tried EVERYTHING.Â I am not getting paid to wax poetic about these things……REALLY.

Design Sponge

Our exterior with the new horsetail planted is on today’s before and after on Design Sponge.Â Check it out here.Â Thanks Grace!

Getting Closer

The weather has been cooperating lately, so we’ve started filling the beds with dirt, staining the new front steps with the hog panels, and installing a bit of drama in the way of landscape lighting.Â I told you we’ve been busy!

We plan to build a separate fenced (deer proof) vegetable/herb garden later on, but for this year, I’m using the new side beds for edibles.Â I’m playin’ it fast and loose…livin’ on the edge…risking their very lives.Â I HAD to…you see, I haven’t had a garden of any sort other than this for TWO YEARS.

You either get this affliction or you are baffled by it.Â Digging in the dirt and growing stuff is something I pschycologically need.Â Once you’re addicted, these little pots of methadone don’t cut it.Â AT ALL.Â Â My whole lettuce crop in this pot is wiped out by a single salad for 4.

I planted many basic herbs and scattered a few seeds to get things rolling…..IF they survive.Â It’s been almost a week and the deer have not bothered them, YET.Â I’m planning an elaborate redneck screening device involving bird netting and thick wire in case things go as the CC predicts.Â Dill, cilantro and lettuces need the cool of early spring so I HAD to go ahead and plant..out in the open….dain-jah, DAIN-JAH!!

OK…I know I sound like a crazy person, but it is, what it is.Â In addition to dangling my herbs out in plain view of the local fauna, I discovered a very welcome surprise in the yard.

Hiding in the scraggled, neglected vinca minor, dead leaves and bare clay…

Is this.Â Hint…3 leaves and NOT poison ivy!

Prairie Trillium.Â Wahooo!Â How could I have missed this last year?!Â It’s a pest to some…NOT HERE.Â I won’t go on, except that finding something salvageable, let alone exquisite, in THIS yard has been a rarity.Â Amongst the miles of poison ivy and dead trees, we have a few of these gems scattered in the forest.Â THANK YOU plant fairies.

My horsetail has been ordered for the front bed and should arrive any day, but I was afraid the dogwood will have leafed out by then, and it needed a moment.Â So, until a bigger tah-dah is available for the front, I give you a mini-tah-dah sneak peek on the lighting featuring said dogwood.Â More to come, I promise.

Bamboo-zled

Every (dry) day is getting a bit warmer and I’m SO ready to get this landscaping to the next level.Â First, it was the cold temps…now, it’s the wet that’s impeding our progress. ARGH! In lieu of actually getting my bamboo and other plants in place…I give you a sampling of my dreams….

These 2 pages/images are from an issue of Garden Design YEARS ago…I had these posted on the wall at my LAST house.Â Now that we live on a slope, I had really hoped we could do this for our new retaining walls in the back…BUT…too pricey for a pour that big and that far from the driveway.