Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Next Step

The quest to turn my ugly front yard into something a little more fun and creative kind of stalled for a little while. My friend and I both had a bunch of stuff going on and, strange as it may seem, I sort of stopped noticing that there was a bunch of bare dirt out there waiting to be turned into paths. My mind, it can ignore anything it wants when it puts its... um... mind to it.

So things languished until we made the time for the next step: covering the grass. You can't just throw a bunch of compost down over grass and then use it as planting beds. The grass will be covered for a little bit, and after that it'll feed on the compost and grow like never before.

No, you must cover the grass. The goal is to make life impossible for it so that it gives up in despair, or at least leaves you alone for a few years. Maybe until you sell the house? My friend tells me that cardboard is a good thing to use, so I hoarded it for a while, and we went tearing around the stores in the area scrounging more. Then we laid it down over the space and covered it with leaves to hold it down.

Cardboard
Ye gods, what a mess.

Newspaper
Niiiiiice newspaper!

Smarter and luckier people would've planned this activity for a day when the weather was at least dry. While we are brilliant and beautiful women, apparently our luck had abandoned us.

It was cold.
It was raining.
It was windy.

I hate to think what the neighbors were saying about us as we laid down cardboard and hauled wet leaves from the street to hold it down with. The incident with the newspaper and the wind gusts was pretty amusing too. Much hysterical laughter.

Raining
Hat head, compounded by hoodie-head... no fun.

My friend has done quite a bit of this work, she's got good rain gear. She was even nice enough to loan me a jacket.

Drowned Rat
Knitter or Drowned Rat?

Didn't help the fact that I was wearing jeans and holey old boots, but I appreciate the thought.

So, the front yard looked like some peculiar white-trash landscaping experiment for a couple of weeks. Then we loaded up my husband's truck with 500 lbs of gravel and put a thin layer down on the paths.

Paths
Progress!

To Door
We need more gravel!

We also re-used some of the cottage stone to help define the curves and to hold the high spots of the beds.

Wall
Artist at work.

We also laid down 2 square yards of compost on the beds, but we ran out of light before I could get any pictures of it. Soon, I swear.

So, the project is moving forward and we're all getting pretty good workouts. A thousand thousand thanks to my husband for all of the shoveling, and to my friend for having the vision and skill to look at a bedraggled patch of grass and see a much more interesting space.

1 comment:

essjay said...

I'm exhausted just *looking* at all that work you did! I can't even begin to imagine how amazing it is going to look when you are done!