Just a girl with a hammer

Tag: front yard

  • Front yard plans

    So. The side yard with its sad weird curves, its buried oil tank, and its random mohawk of roses.

    I’ve spent so much energy in the backyard focusing on shrubs and the structure of the yard that I haven’t gotten to have a lot of fun with perennials. I’ve decided that this is the area where I can get my rocks off and plant any perennials that I feel like and not worry about winter interest or anything. It’s going to be the lab and I’m just going to plant what looks pretty in the catalog and if it looks terrible I’ll just pull it up and plant something else. Anything softening that line of roses has to be an improvement.

    Don’t be jealous of my MS Paint skills.

    That’s not a dragon, that’s an approximation of the perennials I will plant and the pathway we’ll put next to the driveway. I’m going to plant things that butterflies and hummingbirds like and maybe put down gravel around the pavers, which butterflies use to replenish their salts. We already have a birdbath here and a hummingbird feeder, which is being thuggishly guarded by a male.  Hopefully this should draw all the pretty critters to the area viewable from my kitchen window.

    These are the plants that I’m ogling right now. The palate is kind of a mess (orange! purple! red! blue!) but I’m just going to plant them and see what happens.

    There are a lot of agastaches, poppies, and penstemons and a lot of plants I saw in Scott’s yard. I want to work in some grasses so if anyone has a favorite to suggest (cough*scott*cough), I’m all ears. Or if you have a great flower to suggest, let me know!

  • Like they never existed

    Like they never existed

    A dude came out this week with one of those fancy earth-moving machines that make me so nervous. He dug out the rhody stumps, including the one located over our water main. I was working from home that day, ironing out a presentation while the windows rattled and the floor vibrated. It wasn’t stressful at all.

    As the guy left he yelled, “Enjoy your clean slate!” It amazes me; in about an hour he was able to make it like the rhododendron and azalea never existed. I feel extra stupid for ever trying to remove a stump myself. He also ground out the rhododendron in the backyard, nicking the berm on my rain garden a little.

    How funny is that perfect square of sod in the middle of the yard? I broadcast seed around that area, trying to soften the square, but our lawn is rejecting it. I’m just going to start telling people that it’s a modern grass installation. “Eames totally did that in his yard.”

  • Our little box is a naked box.

    Our little box is a naked box.

    Today the tree trimmers came to prune up the dogwood in front and the cedar in back. I think I’ve established that I don’t know what I’m doing when I prune, so I hired out. While they were here they took away the rhodies and the azalea.

    Before

    Ta-da!

    Before

    Oh shit.

    I had a moment of panic when I saw the cedar (so naked! where are her petticoats!?) but I’m getting used to it now. The plants underneath are all shade-loving plants but I think they’ll be okay. They’ll get a little more water this winter and the fence should get a little more sun, which means it might not rot as quickly.

    The guy pruned up the andromeda (Pieris japonica, just to the right of the bamboo) after I told him I wanted to rip it out. He basically told me that I was crazy and that it just needed to be prettified. And I think maybe that silly hippy was right.

     

    I guess we should get rid of that huge dirt pile (which I call “the neighborhood cat toilet”) that formed while I was digging the rain garden. Next week the guys come to grind out the stumps and I will officially have a clean slate out front. Hooray!