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Wednesday, February 3, 2010

WIP: My Tiny Garden Plot

See that lawn? That lush moss and crab grass lawn?

It's not long for this life. Meet your Compost Pile Doom, horrible lawn!

We never water you. We never fertilize you. We hand pull your weeds. Wonder Daddy mows you every week during the summer, and sometimes TWICE.


Henceforth your iron grip on our front yard shall be curtailed. You will be pushed back and defeated. You will be replaced!

Step down, wretched sod.


Apparently our yard used to be full of flower planters, until the previous owners brought in truck loads of dirt and dumped it over everything, then built a shoddy retaining wall on top of a crumbling wooden edging along the driveway- the wall leaned back so far in places, it was a Life Goal for Ernie to be able to walk the entire length of the wall without falling off. (It took a year of trying, but she made it.)

In adition to that rotten wall, the entire lawn has been heaving into weird aquatic shapes- it was relatively smooth when we moved in, but has since settled into hills and valleys. We plan to push it back to at least where it was pre-dirt-dump. There's actually a retaining wall UNDERNEATH the grass. Did you see the yellow ridge in the first photo? There's only 2 or 3 inches on top of a boulder wall. We're bringing it back, baby.


See the barked strip on the right? That's the former dwelling place of the Tomatillos That Could Not Stop. It gets lots of sun.

Wonder Daddy spent last week pulling out all the wall stones and carting them to the backyard- they weigh 50 pounds each, he's kind of sore now, and buffer than he was.



You asked if I had a HUGE backyard. We kind of do, but it's almost entirely shady. This front yard is what I'm pinning all my gardening dreams on. That, and Wonder Daddy's amazing designing ability, to make it look Good. And not something the HOA will send us a letter about.

It helps that all our immediate neighbors have *always wanted* to do edible landscaping, but haven't gotten around to it/didn't know what it would look like. Our next door neighbor really wants a blueberry hedge between our houses- my parents have some berry bushes in their crying out for sun, I think they're going to take a trip to our yard this year or next! Our neighbor also wants chickens.

I love our neighbors.
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5 comments:

LunaMoonbeam said...

Ga yau! Ga yau! (Keep going! Keep going!)

It's going to look awesome. One tip? Don't let the project take so long that you have to re-weed the entire front yard before you can start planting your garden!! Spring is coming....

Teresa said...

Holy cow...tons of work. can't wait to see what you do =)

Debbie said...

This is so great! I can't wait to see the photos as it progresses.

Su said...

*sob* I miss the green.

I too can't wait to see what you do.

Alexandra said...

We've got a similar situation - shade in back and a bit more sun in the front. I'm thinking about moving the veggie garden to the front. The only plants that grows really well in shady back yard are herbs.