yard work is hard work

[capella]

Ah, the joys of homeownership... I just thought I'd share as this project has taken up most of my weekend (it's a good thing :)

So my front yard was a jungle because the Lawn Mower broke, oh and he also broke the machine too (hehe!) OK so Sean's just been too busy to fix the lawnmower, which he broke by putting in too much oil. So yesterday we humbled ourselves and borrowed the neighbor's because we could seriously go on Safari out there. Yay, second rainiest June on record. He finally fixed it today as well.

Then I planted a ton of flowers. OK so I bought the flowers like 2 weeks ago and have just now gotten a nice enough day (you know, no torrential rains or lightning and all) to plant them. Some I fear are not going to make it. Oh well. But you see in my novice thinking... I didn't dig out all the grass and other assorted crap (including these weird logs from a garden bed of yore that had nonsensical placement and were rotted). And guess what that takes a long ass time to dig out.

But I now have a front garden bed ready to go and some flowers planted. Whoooo!!!!! Hooo!!!! They make it look deceptively easy on HGTV.

OK, break over, back to my regularly scheduled planting.

[kimmer23]

well its dry around here....we could use some rain. but i pull weeds and pick the dead buds every week. when you do it every week it only takes about 15 minutes. we have someone that mows our lawn every week, so that is taken care of. they didnt mow it this week though cuz its pretty dry out there....

[winneythepooh7]

I never thought I'd say it but I can't wait to have my own little yard!!!

[tina1979]

I agree with you! Yard work is hard stuff!. My roommate and I rented a house and it has huge flower beds in the front and back. They were extremly grown over. Its killing us to get the weeds out of one bed! We've been working on the one for about a week and its still no where near done. I'm ready to get a tiller and start over from scratch.

[capella]

It's better not to till Tina, because you end up cutting up the grass and mixing it in the dirt. It usually grows back as weeds everywhere. It's best to pull it out in chunks and shake the dirt out of it.
My house had no real garden beds left. The grass had grown up to the house so we dug out the front and got some paver stones to put up as a border. It's hard and it's humid!!

[wordsmith]

I have absolutely no lawn, but my parents have 5 acres they maintain. It's been much easier this summer, because we're having a major drought, and so rather than mow twice weekly, they've mowed twice all summer. The grass is totally brown and dead. And forget flowers.

[tina1979]

It's better not to till Tina, because you end up cutting up the grass and mixing it in the dirt.
I'm thinking of cheating though. Douse the bed in round up wait for the grass to die then till it up. Put some plastic on the ground alot of mulch then start planting from there. I've never seen flower beds so grown over with grass and little thorny weeds.

[midtwenty]

I have absolutely no lawn, but my parents have 5 acres they maintain. It's been much easier this summer, because we're having a major drought, and so rather than mow twice weekly, they've mowed twice all summer. The grass is totally brown and dead. And forget flowers.
I wish our 5.5 acres was brown and dead. It's out of control. And this summer has been rough - Steve is working at least 50 hours a week and I'm far too pregnant to help with any of the heavy-duty yard work. So just keeping it from being ass-deep all the time is about all we can manage. The trouble with our acreage is the couple hundred trees we have, which makes mowing and trimming more difficult and take longer. The last two summers, with him mowing and me trimming, it's been about a 6-7 hour job. This summer we've been brush hogging it, and that has helped. But I can't trim, so it still looks unfinished even when freshly mowed. I maintain two flower beds and that's about the extent of my yard work for this season. *sigh*