First Buds

I may not have a green thumb, but the Lord has certainly answered my prayer to make my garden grow - the roses are beginning to bloom! I'm so excited!! Woo hoo!! Yay! Opa!!

26 Helping Hands

So if you've ever been to my house, you know that my backyard is the bane of my existence. For the 4 years I've lived in my house, it's been a real trial for me and it's certainly never been anything to brag about...until now.

A few weeks ago, I'd finally had enough of the mediocre, raggedy, embarrassment of a backyard and so I laid out a plan of attack. After a few landscaping quotes, I quickly decided I was better off to do the work myself. But it was such a big job - I hardly knew where to start. Thankfully with the trusty help of Round-Up and the assistance of a few co-workers and their roto-til, I was able to get the yard back to a manageable "blank slate." Next I was scheduled to have 8 yards of dirt delivered to my driveway for the renovation to truly begin. I don't know why, but the prospect of 8 yards of dirt really freaked me out. At night I would picture a pile of dirt stacked higher than the garage in front of my house and no means to distribute it. This, of course, was absurd. But nonetheless, I was a bit nervous about the whole thing.

Therefore, I emailed an "all hands on deck" call for help to my network of friends in Bellingham. I expected a few people would turn out and help me haul my dirt tonnage to the backyard, but I had never dreamed the EVERYONE would respond yes! That's right, 13 people responded to the call and committed to helping me out (I think it was the Boundary Bay beer and Rudy's Pizza that did it, to be honest...). I was truly shocked and humbled that my friends would rally together to help me out. So when I found out I had manpower in abundance, I made a "pit stop" at the local nursery and bought enough flowers and trees to round out the back yard. Two and a half hours later - my yard was a green, leafy masterpiece.

Thanks you guys - there's NO WAY I could have done it without you!!

Me and Weed & Feed Don't Get Along

I do my best to be a good home owner. I try to bring the garbage cans in promptly so they're not sitting despondent and forlorn at the curb's edge. I do my best to take down the crooked, Charlie Brown-esk Christmas lights I've hung promptly after the holidays. And every spring I renew my commitment to myself to really, really stay on top of taking care of the yard this year.

(Now, this commitment is largely inspired by my great friend and neighbor, Dustin Terpening. If you don't know him, when it comes to lawn care, only one word comes to mind: meticulous. His front and back yard are incredible - definitely one of the best on the street. He's got plush green grass in the front so thick it's like carpet and fruit trees, a vegetable garden, and some kind of compost-y thing I don't understand in the back. Yeah. So when I say "inspired", I only kind of mean "am put to shame by his masterpiece and try to make my yard look decent".)

Each year it gets a little easier though - the lawn mower sputters and dies on me less often, I start pulling the weeds before they take over the yard - I even started getting fresh bark to spread over the flower beds to keep it all pretty. But no matter the efforts, darned if I can't keep the weeds and moss from taking over my lawn. No luxurious green carpet in my front yard folks. And it seems no amount of mowing it lessens the white-trashy feel it gets due to the high volume of weeds.

So this year, as I renewed my yard maintenance vow, I began by consulting my green-thumbed neighbor and decided to try my hand with a little Weed and Feed to tackle my front lawn woes. It seemed simple enough: buy the stuff, spread it evenly throughout the lawn and let it work it's mojo. Right. Got it. Step one seemed to go smooth enough. I bought a package that said "Weed & Feed" right on it. I brought it home and read the entire back label (like the good little girl I am) and proceeded to open the bag and carefully shake the contents out onto my lawn.

Now, if you're not familiar with Weed & Feed, it's basically a bunch of white pellets. They come out pretty quick and my intuition told me not to spread it too thick, so I did my best to spread it thinly and evenly over the yard. However, when the bag was about half empty, the contents significantly slowed down as they came out. And in fact, the opening became clogged with a big glob of what I can only describe as fertilizer encrusted poo. Huh, that was weird.

I continued to try and shake the rest of the bag out, but quickly discovered that there were only bigger, more severe cloggers coming down the pipeline. That's okay, I decided - I'll just crumble the poo-like substance in my hands and continue spreading it over the lawn. I did think it was a little weird I hadn't seen any of the faux poo in the first half of the contents, but perhaps it had just settled, no biggie. So I cheerily grabbed the first chunk of "poo" and attempted to crumble it in my hands and go about distributing it.

The thing is, this unidentified substance (which I was beginning to think really was poo) had the same clingy, slightly moist quality that poo can have and after I attempted to crumble it, it was unwilling to part with my hands. In fact, I was reduced to flinging the "poo" off my hands in the manner of sticky boogers. This really didn't work either (as it usually doesn't with boogers either) and was forced to wipe the "poo" onto the grass. Hmm. Seeing as I had several more large chunks of faux-poo left on the lawn, I didn't see that I really had much other choice than to repeat the crumble-fling-wipe maneuver to distribute the rest. At this point, I am now convinced this is NOT how Weed & Feed application is supposed to go. I am also beginning to recall a small portion of text from the packaging that mentioned something about animals being attracted to this particular "Weed & Feed" as it contains actual animal feces. Awesome. So I have some weird-o poop all over my hands that I am crumble/fling/wiping all over the grass at random intervals all in a vain attempt to improve the state of my front yard. Instead, I just basically crapped all over it. Gar, home ownership is rough I tell ya.

**Note: no, weed & feed is not supposed to be like that....I have no explanation other than that.