This Wasn't Part of the Deal - Yard Work, That Is

When I decided to quit my job and come live with Stephen, I wholeheartedly agreed to take on all the housework during the day until I found a new full-time job.  That way we could have more quality time to spend with each other in the evenings. Dawww.  Such newlyweds.

The catch was that he would take over 100% of the yard work. "I actually like doing yardwork," he said.  "I'll take care of it," he said.

To be fair, he really has done a great job.  I've planted a couple flowers and water our outdoor plants that aren't in sprinkler range (and our chia pet when I remember), and he usually does the mowing or spraying of weed killer.  And has troubleshooted the sprinkler system oh-so-many times.

All that just covers maintenance, though.  Labor day weekend (aka Sweatfest 2013) was a very different story.  (You might be thinking that is too late in the year to do yard work! Maybe where you live.  But even in September we hit 100 degree days here, and since I didn't move in until late spring, this was the first chance we had to work on it without a death-by-dehydration wish.)

Here is the blank canvas we had to work with.  Granted, this photo was taken before we even closed on our house, sometime in February 2013.  So if there was grass, it would be brown.  But this is just dirt with a bad beard.

Not pictured: The side yard.  But it's dirt too.

We planted grass in May, but it was too hot for much action.  Here is a picture from Google Maps (I saw them driving by to take this photo! You can see my head in the garage!  How cool!) where you can see only the part that is shaded by the house in the evenings was able to grow.

My alma mater basketball coach, Jimmy Valvano once said, "Don't give up. Don't ever give up."  Not positive he meant trying to grow grass in the desert southwest, but who really knows.

So I went all out.  I have a grasp on home interiors - color schemes, furniture placement, etc.  But landscaping? SOOO out of my league. I spent a couple weeks driving home the long way, admiring lots of yards. About 80% of people in our neighborhood "desertscape" their yards, which means fill it with gravel (yuck).  But being from the east coast, we knew we wanted grass, so there weren't many yards to admire.

I hate this picture.  It reminds me of being miserable.

I came up with a plan that I thought was feasible (at least on graph paper).  The first step was removing the enormous bush covering the window, since we were going to put pavers there for a patio.

The Before

This was HARD.  I have no words to describe how miserable this was, even though we were in the shade in September (it happened to be in the 90s that day).  When we finally dug this out after several hours (using a combination of shovel, hedge trimmer, and chainsaw), this is what we had to show for our efforts:

Yerp.  That's the ginormous tangly root ball.  Also a tribute to my misery that day. (We also dug up a lot of bricks doing this.  Why are they buried underground?  Oh, just to make our lives more confusing and difficult.)

While Stephen started tilling the dirt portion of our yard to prepare for more grass seed, I placed pavers.  I ended up with a super wonky patio, but I was so hot and miserable, I DIDN'T CARE (we've since fixed it, but waited for a cooler day).

The After

The planters and solar lights were new additions, too.

Stephen had built this garden bench, which was perfect for this patio.  It's my favorite spot to come cool off from a run, or read a book in the evening.  Although it's not super comfortable.  How great does it look here?

We happened to snag some shrubs at Kmart on clearance, so after the yard was tilled, we used a combination of digging and erosion to make holes for them.  The ground here is HARD, ya'll.  My muscles hurt just thinking about this.

I was so anxious to finish that task, I don't have pictures, but after planting the shrubs, we lined everything in bricks and that black edging stuff.  Then laid landscape fabric, and about 10 bags of mulch.

Here's what we had accomplished at the end of the day.  I can't believe this only took us one day.

Oh yeah! We also planted that tree right there.  What you can't see in this photo is all the grass we planted... that somehow grew into weeds. Sigh.  But here, anything green goes.  When everything is green, our yard looks stellar.  But then winter comes.  You can see our little tree decorated at Christmas... see all the brown grass and green weeds?  Big sigh.

It survived the winter and is currently in bloom! Huzzah!

Next weekend is Stephen's birthday.  But the weekend after that is prime time for dirt tillin' and grass plantin' (I just haven't told him that yet!). This year I'm making him stick to his promise - 100% of the yardwork goes to him! Maybe this year he'll even get the other half to grow!

Here's a breakdown of costs (from what I remember):
Grass seed: $30
Brick (pavers and edging): $100
Landscape edging: $30
Planters: $10 (clearance)
Tree: $20
Shrubs: $10 (clearance)
Mulch: $25
Solar lights: $25
Landscape fabric: $10
Tiller rental: $60
Labor: Free for us, but I would charge someone else $1,000,000 to do it for them.
Total: $330

Overall, I'm glad it's done... but this is not something I would do again.  We still have a whole back yard to tend to, so maybe we'll hire someone to do that part for us.  Or just desertscape.  I feel beaten into submission by the intense sun.

Just for fun, here's the before and after:

Neglected

Cute!

Do you guys have any tips for planting grass that gets no shade? Or any good weedkiller recommendations? I need your help because the pansies I planted last week are already dead.

posted by Emma