Lawn Labors

Anyone who's been following this blog for a few years know that each fall and spring, we slave over trying to make the lawn look healthy and green. I mentally divide the work into two major parts. The first is reclaiming the lawn from overgrown weeds, bushes, ivy, border plants gone wrong, etc. The second is making the areas that are already lawn grow green, healthy, weed-free grass. (yes, all of these categories lead to a different post, which should give you some idea of how much effort we've put in over time).

This year, as I mentioned last time, we decided we needed professional help. We did some work on our own in the spring, before the bugs came out. We cleared out some more liriope from the side section next to our driveway, both giving the bushes more room and carving out some more "lawn" area from the overgrown border edge:

But then this started happening every time we went outside (if you can't tell from my ugly feet, I have about 10 mosquito bites from working in the yard for about 10 minutes). So we largely ignored the outside all summer, whenever possible, doing only minimal yard work and weeding.

So this fall when we realized we needed to hire some people to take down our tree, we also got a quote on the grass and decided that the monetary cost was far better than the blood, sweat, and tears we were devoting to making it look nice. Because the grass seed we were laying never grew healthy and because we have moss, the landscaper declared that our soil was too acidic (apparently this is good for gardens, but not for lawns). So he advised the lawn of debris, advised aerating the soil to break it up a little, laying down lime to turn the soil more alkaline, and then over-seeding with hearty sun/shade combo grass seed. For under $500, they would fix our front, back, and side yards.

They spend a couple of days doing everything they said they would, laying down some straw to protect the seed and even come back twice to re-clear debris - the acorns this year were particularly voluminous and hard to clean up (they cleaned up once again for free and then we agreed to pay them to come back once more).

We're not really seeing any improvement, but hopefully all the conditions are right and in the spring we'll get some new healthy grass. In the meantime, we're doing our part. Already last year, we were trying to get in the habit of keeping the lawn free of leaves with a combination of raking, blowing, and mowing (none of which are very good at clearing the acorns, which is why we paid to let them handle those). We learned that leaves are acidic, and so in addition to killing grass by covering it up, it also ruins the soil by releasing acids while decomposing (remember - alkaline is good for grass).

Late this week, the trees finally decided it was fall and dropped a bunch of leaves (with many more still on the trees waiting to fall). So today D cut the lawn, picking up the leaves as he went. It's really quite amazing that a lawn mower can be such an effective leaf clearer.

And now we wait until spring and see if we got our money's worth!

December? Really?

It's December on the calendar and the leaves have finally fallen. (Remember this post about being done raking? Yeah, that was overly optimistic...we had to rake/mow/mulch twice more after that. But now it's really truly done for the year.) You'd never know from the temperatures though. Even though there has been an occasional frosty morning, days have climbed into the 50s. All those new bulbs have been tricked into thinking it's spring!!!

Even our established camellias, which I think should really know better by now, are sporting tiny buds.

I wish I could warn these little guys to stay in hiding for a few more months! Do you think that this will mess things up come spring by killing them off too soon?

Despite the warmth, it's getting to be that time of year again where I go crazy and decorate everything. If you're a very loyal reader, you may remember that last year, we put lights up outside by tossing them haphazardly in the wild shrubbery.

But that shrubbery is now history, thanks to our new landscaping. So I went a little crazy and decided to outline the house. Thankfully, even though D thinks I've gone totally holiday-bonkers, he agreed to help, since this was a two-man operation.

I'm hoping the little lights stay up until January and don't do any damage. We slid them under the slates, which is where the gutter guards fit in. They seem pretty secure and don't seem to be putting any pressure on the slates. Let's all keep our collective fingers crossed!

Wait, no "after" pictures?

Nope, not yet. That's something I'm saving for my Christmas montage post. Stay tuned!

How We Spent Our Saturday

Unlike years past, we've been diligently raking up the leaves this fall, to keep our grass from dying. We noticed that if we removed the leaves weekly, the task didn't seem quite so onerous. That and we have a fancy, new, battery-powered lawnmower that's super quiet and does a pretty good job of scooping up, mulching, and bagging the leaves, making the huge backyard seem a lot easier to handle (oh, and it also cuts grass).

Black and Decker CM1936

We especially wanted to make sure the new grass coming up on the newly defined borders of our flower beds had every opportunity to grow. See that nice pretty green hidden under the leaves?

(Oh, and on a side note, we decided to "mulch" our garden with chopped up leaves, which are supposedly a handy free way to keep bulbs and baby plants warm all winter. Easier than hauling mulch, that's for sure...)

So after all this raking, imagine our dismay to wake up to this on Saturday morning:

You would never guess that we had raked 6 days earlier. But after 2.5 hours of intense raking, mowing, and hauling:

 And just to prove that we did the whole yard and not just the half in the photo:

(We did the back too, but since I didn't get a before photo, I didn't see much point in getting an after one.)

The better news comes from these views:

Not too many more leaves left to fall!!! Hopefully we got the bulk of it and won't have to spend another whole day doing clean up again until spring.

Oh, and for anyone keeping track, after FOUR WEEKS of regular yard waste pick up, we still have a hefty amount of liriope sitting in our driveway waiting for its turn on the curb. But I'm happy to report that now, on the fifth week, it's finally GONE!!!!! Next we just have to bundle up the compose from under the tarp and we'll have our driveway back!

A Good Workout

It's a good thing that I find raking oddly fun and rewarding, because we've been doing a lot of it lately. Today I raked the front yard for the second time and helped D in the backyard rake the piles he created with the leaf blower onto the tarp. We hauled 7 tarp-loads from the backyard to the curb, in addition to what I had already pushed there from the front  (thank goodness for curbside leaf pickup). See how pretty our frontyard looks? And all the leaves on the curb?

Here's another view to help you appreciate the quantity of leaves we hauled:

While raking, we also took care of a few other winter necessities. D brought in the hoses while I shut off the water to the outside and put our little faucet booties on the spigots:

And if that wasn't a good enough workout today, we also bought and lugged home (with the help of some amazing friends) a treadmill! I'm building quite an exercise facility in the basement. I think, however, that I might be too sore for the next few days to use it. Raking wakes up muscles I didn't know existed!

We're also doing a few indoor projects, but I'll save those for another post.

Wild winds wield wicked wallop

We have had (like much of the East Coast) a long spell of hot weather - more than 10 straight days of over 90 degree days. Along with the typical high humidity, it has been very unpleasant summer.

On Sunday, we finally got a break. While watching TV in the early afternoon we noticed it got very dark. Then some extremely violent winds swept through in a few minutes. Branches from our big old trees immediately decided that being on the ground was a good idea. The high winds and loud crashing noises led me to suggest that we mosey down to the basement. RIGHT NOW.

We sat down their for about 15 minutes until the winds died down, hoping our heavy and expensive slate roof tiles would stay intact. After waiting another 30 minutes to make sure the winds did not pick up again, I headed out to check our roof, cars, and yard. When I stepped outside I first was surprised by how cool it was outside. I estimate it dropped from around 100 degrees to 80 degrees in less an hour.

Our roof and cars appear to have escaped the attention large branches. After about an hour of collecting work I had this:

Three branches whose diameter was thicker than my thigh ended up on terra firma. Just small enough so I could corral them to the curb. I was thankful nothing larger came down. I managed to compress it into a smaller bunch on the curb:

Two trash cans are also in the picture. They are just engulfed by the branches. 

The next day (today), when I came home the curb was empty. Our town does have high taxes, but at least we get great service!

Spring Projects

We are finally getting to the projects that we did not have time for in the fall, when we realized we had missed the warm weather window (how's that for alliteration?) for applying exterior paints and wood conditioners. D has been raking up and bagging most of the remaining leaves. Today he also applied Thompsons Water Seal to the little bits of bare wood holding up our back porch steps. I took on a few projects as well:

First, last week, I made what will probably be my only attempt this year at landscaping (I retreat inside when it gets warm and buggy), by adding a pretty pink jasmine plant (jasmimum polyanthum) to our lamppost. I'm not one for gardening but there was a great idea in a magazine to wrap a lamppost in chicken wire and then plant a viney plant at the base, so that it will grow up the post. Here it is before I filled in the hole:

I tied the (plastic) wire on with zip ties and then tied the vines to it gently with string. It doesn't look very impressive but the area gets a lot of sun and no little critters have tried to eat it yet, so I consider that a good sign for future growth.

Here's a picture of what it could look like in bloom, one day:

(photo credit to http://www.flickr.com/photos/mondomuse/3268234488/)

While I was digging a hole for the jasmine plant, I started to realize exactly how annoying it was that we had a "bumper crop" of acorns this year. Besides loudly falling on my car all fall, those little guys really set up house. I photographed just a few but I pulled out dozens. They are in all our flower beds, making themselves comfortable--safe from any mowing activity:

At this rate we are going to end up living on an oak tree farm!

Today my big project was to cover the bare wood on our picture window. It's a lot harder to scrape paint, even barely-adhering paint, than I thought. I spent an hour or so hacking at it with a metal scraper, a wire brush, and a razor. Even though I figured the paint was not original to the house, I wore a little face mask in case there was lead dust. (They make home-buyers sign so many lead-disclosures that I think they made me a little paranoid.)

The obligatory "before" shots (this was after I scraped most of the loose paint, so the windows look even worse than usual).

We used Sherwin William's Duration Exterior in gloss finish. Since we didn't know exactly what color "white" we were working with and how much of the window's color was actually just dirt and aging, we went with untinted out-of-the-can white. It is definitely different, but we are hoping that a little rain, sun, and dirt evens it out. It's close enough that you can't see the difference in the photo:

(Isn't it nice of our cat to model for us?)

And finally, a few more random yard shots of our flowering plants. If you are able to identify any of them, let us know.

Pretty pink blossoms that the bees seem to love (also a view of our as-yet untreated window, if you look closely):

Beautiful white blooms near our garage.

And mystery buds on a tree in our backyard (with more pictures of the fully-bloomed tree to follow).

Autumn Leaves

We've taken a break on home improvements after the Housewarming Party and decided to focus on the holiday season instead. But that doesn't mean we could ignore standard cold-weather preparations. And so today we tackled the leaves...

We raked the front yard once shortly before our party, but had deliberately ignored the back--which no one can see from the street--until most of the leaves fell. By late November, "fall" was over. D used the blower while I raked (I wanted too--I needed a post-Thanksgiving work-out). We filled 5 tarps-worth of leaves, which we dragged to the front curb. Fortunately, our neighborhood has curbside pick-up that runs on a cycle, so we don't even have to bag the leaves. There are still a lot of leaves in the back but we made a nice dent in it. We also re-raked the front yard. I'm sure I will be sore tomorrow.

We also finally got around to shutting our outdoor faucets. It took a while to find the right knobs, since we completely forgot that kind of useful information we got during our home inspection. But we figured it out, and have the outdoor faucets open with the indoor part shut down. As soon as we find them in the garage, we will also dress the faucets with the cute little booties my parents gave us.

What didn't we do? Well, we have some unfinished wood on our back steps that we planned to weatherproof.

The problem, which we just noticed today, is that Thompson's Water Seal requires a few days of dry, warm weather. The instructions state that 2 days of above 50-degree weather is necessary. We may have missed the boat on this one. Hopefully the wood won't take too much of a beating this winter and we can take care of it in the spring.

Another thing we didn't get to, but that is on our fall prep list, is fixing our window sills. The front bay window was already on our list of to-do's:

Then D's dad noticed that we have some rotting outside our upstairs windows, and that we should treat it before it rots too deeply.  The upstairs bedroom window is much worse than the bay window. It's practically hollow in there:

We need to buy some wood filler and exterior primer and paint. By default, we tend to go to Sherwin Williams; but I think this job doesn't require a particularly nice paint, so we'll probably just go to Home Depot. Paint recommendations are welcome. We're also considering just replacing the upstairs windows, which are original to the house and do not have storm or screen windows. If we do that, the sill will get replaced too. Alternately, we could just install storm/screen windows to the existing structure, which means that we will still have to fix the sill (that could be a tongue-twister). We're still doing research and it's all pretty expensive, so we'll probably just stop the rot and deal with the bigger issues later.