The first nice Saturday of the year ...

Today was the first nice Saturday of 2010 here in Wichita.

Now, let me quickly explain something, especially for my Florida friends. A "nice day" in the middle of winter in Kansas means that it was in the 40s, sunny, and the wind was less than 10mph. I know the true Floridians will shiver, but it was actually quite pleasant out if dressed appropriately - at least while it was in the upper 40s.

The nice day allowed me to _finally_ get out pick up all the limbs that broke out of the trees behind my house during the blizzard on Christmas Eve. For over two months, I've seen them dangling in the trees and covering the ground everytime I looked out my living room or bedroom windows. Most of them were really in the commons area behind my home, but still in my direct view. Every weekend, there's either been snow on the ground or it was too wet and cold to get out there and deal with them. So, today they were finally picked up.

In trying to pick them up, I realized that there were many smaller branches and large twigs that could not be easily picked up. I went after the rake. But, when I start raking them, I was also getting the leaves that fell after the last "clean up" mowing (and, actually, after the first snow of the year). So, the limb pick-up job expanded to also raking the back yard and part of the commons area.

Three and a half hours, one full trash can (that was empty when I started), four totally packed trash bags, and a bundle of larger limbs cut to size for pick later, my back yard looks great!

There's a reason that the bags were packed so tightly. I realized when the trash can was nearly full that I would have to use bags. When I went to get them, I only had three left. Hence, the reason for packing them as tightly as possible. When I filled the third one, I had to "borrow" one from something in the garage that was covered with it. Whew ... that got me finished without having to make a trip to the store.

making progress on the landscaping

I still have "a ways" to go, but at least I am making progress on relandscaping. The focus for this summer has been the area on the street side of my front wall.

As most of you know, I had a curved sidewalk poured from the driveway to my front walkway last year. The only landscaping in front of that section of wall had been about a 1ft (maybe a little more) bed in front of the wall with (what is supposed to be) decorative grass on both ends and some sort of bulb plants (bloom yellow - but not daffodils) in between. The "clumps" of grass were definitely NOT decorative to my way of thinking ... and the other plants were okay, but not really healthy (not very pretty).

I then "share" a wall with my neighbor to the north. In front of her side of it, she had a nice "curved" bed with several nice plants. In front of my side was the same straight area with another of those grass "clumps" by my walkway and more of the yellow flowers.

So, I started with that section & "curved" the bed on my side out to my sidewalk to be symmetrical with hers. I removed the grass clump and most of the yellow flowers as well as all the extra sod from the new portion. I thought the sod would be hard part. I dug it up carefully, so that I could transplant it to other areas of the yard that had bare spots. Well, I found the reasons for those bare spots! Underneath them was either rock, clay or roots! So, relaying the sod was more difficult than digging it out. :(

Once I had gotten the sod laid, I returned to the bed. Digging out the huge ornamental grass plant turned out to be the REAL work. Since this (original) bed had large river rock instead of mulch, I had to move it out of the way to dig around the plant. Of course, you always place some sort of cloth underneath rock to keep it from sinking into the dirt. Whatever they used was VERY good. I could not break through it to dig the plant out! I had to pull it up from that entire section so I could dig the roots out from under it. But, since the original hole cut for this plant had become too small, the roots had actually enmeshed into the cloth! The only way to free it was to cut it out. That whole process took longer than digging the sod out!

I then also dug out most of the yellow plants so that I could put a dwark crepemyrtle near the wall (again, adding symmetry to the other side where she had one as well). I later planted a carpet rose bush in the front "curved" portion of that bed.

What is left to do in that bed is get more river rock and get it put down in the new area. It's waiting for completion of the other side to do that all at once for both beds.

That was "Day 1" of the project - which was July 25.

I'll continue the saga in another post ... it's still "in work" but I am making progress!