Saturday, August 27, 2011

Landscaping, Part I

Meet my yard:

It seems generous to call it a yard.  "Dirt lot" would probably be more appropriate.  Leni once had grand plans about the stages in which he wanted to landscape the dirt lot including bushes, redoing parts of the terrace, steps and walkways, and finally.....grass.

Since the snow melt, however, I've had different thoughts.  Every time the dogs go into the backyard, they wrestle and roll around and bring in TONS of dirt and dust.  By the beginning of summer, I was just plain SICK of it.  So we decided (read: I decided) to plant grass on the lowest, largest level of the yard this year so that the dust-in-the-house issue wouldn't be such a problem next spring.

After researching what grass to plant and how to do it, we chose the end of the summer to do the project, hoping that the monsoon rains would aid in the watering process that germination requires.

So we broke the project into two weekends.  Last weekend,  we hauled and tilled more than two and a half tons of compost into the yard.

Moving from the truck, up the steep front yard, and into the back.

Spreading the compost out.

 
8 HP tiller!

Weekend 1: done!
Next came this weekend.  Just one day's worth of work this time instead of two.  The plan was to install some edging, actually plant the grass, and then cover it with straw to protect it while it germinates.

Installing the edging

Edging doesn't want to be straight....wonder why

Putting down 20 lbs of grass seed

Seed now covered with 5 huge bales of straw
Chicken wire fence keeping the poor dogs off
So there you have it.  The seeds are being heavily watered as I type this and the copious amounts of water will continue for several weeks.  We should start to see little blades coming up in about 2 weeks, or so we're told.  Time will tell!

Stay tuned for the eventual Part II post, hopefully with pictures of green grass!

Keep it Real!

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