Grass Master

So all of this work in the front yard has made Chris a bit obsessive about the lawn. Our lawn is alright. Better then the guy on the left, on par with the guy on the right, but it pales in comparison to the guy across the street. His lawn is perfect and Chris has decided to step up his lawn game. Now I didn't see any crabgrass, but Chris manged to find and remove a lot of it:

To add to the visual appeal of the whole deal. He cut the grass really short before digging:

Not exactly an improvement at this point. But he put down 'lawn soil' and new seed. He then fertilized the whole lawn.

So we might be the only house with a sprinkler on in Mid-October, but Chris is hoping for a better lawn in the spring. I am filing this whole obsession about the lawn under "Man Things" but as long as he is doing the work, he can do whatever he wants. 

Have You Seen this Tree?

So when I posted those pictures of Chris putting up the flags, I noticed just how over-grown the front yard was. Just as a reminder, here is the 'before' picture:

And here is the 'after' picture:

It is looking a little shaggy. These pictures don't show it but there are also several medium sized trees that are growing under the large trees. Here is a picture of some small Japanese Maples growing near the front bushes:

There was no question. These little guys needed to come out. They were not really viable where they were growing anyway, and I needed to start somewhere with the jungle in the front yard. So I dug them up:

I felt bad just chucking them, so I planned to treenap them over state lines to deliver them to my mother. I had visions of extracting a 'root ball' with lots of soil, but I learned that our soil is a bit too sandy to do so. So I sadly got less roots than expected and next to no dirt.  In that picture above, they just seem like little trees, but there was some much larger trees:

I carefully wrapped the roots in potting soil and plastic bags:

Now for the hard part. I needed to put all these trees into my small red chevy:

Chris has no idea the level of crazy that he lives with. Luckily, 1 part engineer + 1 part crazy = Mission Accomplished:

This is the last known photo of the trees. They are thought to have been treenapped to western Pennsylvania by a small build Caucasian woman and a sausage shaped brown dog and are suspected to be hiding in my mother's backyard. 

June Flowers!

So as my battle with the Creepers continues, I am finding even more gems hidden under all that brush. I have already gushed about my love for the peony and lily I found in May, and now I have two more lovelies to share. The first of which I knew was there, but wasn't sure what color it was going to be. Meet the hydrangea bush:

Depending on the acidity of your soil, the hydrangea blooms can vary from pink to blue (with shades of purple in between). The varying color depends on the amount of aluminum that the plant absorbs, which is based on the pH of your soil: more acidic (lower pH, more aluminum absorption) = blue flowers, more basic (higher pH, less aluminum absorption) = pink flowers. Sorry to go all Bill Nye on you there, but long story short, it looks like ours are blue. It's a boy! I shall call you Larry. 


I would like to claim credit for finding the next plant, but that really goes to Lucy. So while I was hacking away at the bushes (this has become a daily obsession of mine...with no end in sight), Lucy was suspiciously busy. When I went to investigate I found that she was eating the plants. Normally, this would be a "BAD DOG!" moment, but then I realized what she was snacking on: Strawberries!

As you can tell, there is still some freeing to be done to get to the strawberries, but they are definitely there. It is always exciting to see more variety in the plants and I was especially pleased because these reminded me of the strawberry plant that I got in elementary school while visiting the local farm. My grandfather helped me plant it along my childhood home. So while I had to compete with the birds for ripe strawberries growing up, it looks like my biggest competition for strawberries now has four legs and is shaped like a sausage: 

Dog...the Berry Hunter!

Fo-Reel Mower

One of the things that would have been nice in a house that we don't have in this home is a two car garage. It has a one car garage...that is already filled with moving boxes:

It being a garage and all, I would one day like to keep the car in there (especially in the winter) and because of this it is important for us to try and save space. One way to do this is to not buy large pieces of equipment that need storage (snow blowers, tractors, ride-on lawnmowers). Luckily, we don't have a very large yard:

Yup. What you see is pretty much what you get in this photo. There isn't grass in the back and there is only a small strip on the other side of the driveway. This storage issue was really just a platform for me to get Chris to buy into my Hippie agenda - Reel Mowers! Better for the environment, don't really break down, and aren't so scary that I wouldn't cut the grass. Well, it worked. He spent some time researching and got this lil' guy, whom I have named Fiskers (his 'reel' name is Fiskars - ahahah puns!):

I know Chris is cutting the grass in this picture (Action Shot), but I cut it sometimes too....like at least once. It take a bit more effort to cut the grass with a push mower and it doesn't cut really tall grass well (Shout out to Neighbor Bob, who was nice enough to lend us his gas mower for the first time), but is working out for us and as long as the grass keeps growing, we'll keep mowing.