Nora: Landscaping

We've been spending the past few weeks working in our backyard. After moving into this house we realized several things about the backyard:

1. Just because there is not grass does not mean it is less maintenance (what we originally thought.)

2. It is deceivingly huge. (Murphey originally vetoed this house because he didn't think there would be room for the dogs in the backyard... He now admits he was VERY wrong about that.)

3. If we do not maintain this stuff it will overtake our deck, then our house, and then, most likely, eat us one by one.

4. How do we expect to take care of this landscaping when we could barely even grow grass in the 20' x 20' backyard of our townhouse in NoVa?

5. The built in sprinkler system has a built in mind of it's own.

The previous owner was very handy, he built the deck himself. Murphey was talking to one of our neighbors the other day and they commented that the previous owners were ALWAYS out back gardening and doing home improvement projects... Hmm... Uh-oh... We could be in trouble here...

One of the things the previous owner did was build a 10x13 dog "area." They had two small dogs that could fit through 2 dog doors (one in the den, one in the garage) to access this dog area. There's no way our greyhounds could fit through those doors, so for the past year and half this area has been wasted space in our backyard. We finally decided to do something about it, and Murphey cut a "gate" out in the lattice that encloses this area and "voila!" we have the perfect area for our dogs to relieve themselves, and we don't have to hunt all over the yard (and deck, gross) to clean up their piles!!!! It's very exciting...

Maybe now we will have to worry less about stuff like this happening. Here's a picture of an evergreen that the dogs killed by peeing on it. That should be fun to pull out. (Don't worry, that critter is a dog toy, not Nora's precious Joshua)

I feel like I've accomplished more than weeding out back though. It's proving to be quite a journey for me. I've logged hours and hours figuring out what exactly we have growing out back, learning about gardening and why mulch and compost and plant food are important. They now recognize me at the local nursery, as they should, seeing that last weekend I was there every 4 hours or so.

They were helpful for the most part, except the part where they told me that corn gluten meal would be a good natural pre-emergent herbicide (stop the weeds before they grow) to put in the cracks of our flagstone patio. I thought the stuff would sort of dissolve in the cracks and I could cover it with more gravel, but that is not the case. Seconds after spreading it I realized that it looked like I spread ground up Cheetos everywhere. The ants agreed as they converged and began carrying it away to feast. Bad idea... Now I will be shopvac'ing it all up, gravel and all and going the chemical route. At least I tried the natural way.

I feel like this year, I finally have an idea of what we should be doing. A few weeks ago we pruned the hell out of everything, and afterwards we just looked at each other and said "what have we done... I think we've killed everything..." Believe it or not though, everything is still alive and either budding or in full bloom!!! We'll see what everything looks like at the end of the season, but I feel like we've survived the first hurdle.

I'm not very good at taking before and after pictures, but here's what our yard looks like now:

Our Deck

Path from Garage to backyard, (yes, those are all weeds that are in their final stages of death to the left.)

Area in front of the dog run, roses and Jackman Clematis vines in background. The vine on the right used to look like the vine (bush) on the left, until I 'pruned' it. It looks like it's surviving. Now I can cut the other one back :)