Our first planting season did not bring much in the way of actual landscape or plants of any kind. The number one priority was keeping the dirt in the yard and out of the street. Bring on the lawn! Due to the HOA rules we did not have many options for turf. Grasses that grow from runners, such as Bermuda and Buffalo, are strictly forbidden in our neighborhood. (If only they would inform the prairie grass on the other side of my fence that it isn’t allowed perhaps it would behave a little better). J So we had two choices - fescue seed or fescue sod. Since we have a dog we decided sod was the better choice because neither one of us wanted to wait months before allowing the dog to walk around outside – after all it was her new house too!
Having the sod laid was a real experience, never in my life had I seen anything like that – instant lawn in one day! Plus, because fescue is a cool season grass that requires more water, we also had the opportunity to put in a sprinkler system. I call it an ‘opportunity’ because I would probably cry if I really thought back and remembered what a pain it was setting up that system. I won’t even mention the constant monthly adjustments and multiple times we’ve had to fix/replace pieces and parts. And who can forget the fun of crawling around on our hands and knees every spring trying to find those reclusive sprinkler heads that somehow manage to get buried under six inches of grass and dirt over the winter – so much fun! (Sarcasm included). Now don’t get me wrong –my sprinkler system does make my garden life more efficient (especially in the months of July and August) and because we have well water it allows me to water all of my landscape for a very economical price. But for some reason when I’m running around in the spring adjusting sprinkler heads, sopping wet, covered in mud, freezing my tail off…those positive aspects seem to escape me.
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| Preparing the hole for our first tree (he always gets stuck with the hard jobs) |
Along with the yard and the fence, we did manage to plant a couple of trees that fall. The first official plant in the ground was a 4ft tall Singleseed Contorted Hawthorne that we picked up at a local garden center for what I thought was a steal at 40 bucks. On a side note this was also the last time I purchased any plant during its dormant stage (as the sales guy called it). For when this poor tree leafed out in the spring it had such a bad case of blight the leaves all fell off within the first month! However, because I’m a sap for poor defenseless, sick plants I have been treating it for the past two years and am happy to announce that last year (its third year growing in my yard) it retained all of its leaves and even had pink flowers in the spring. Its leaves are still quite small and some continue to have spots but I still hold out hope that one day it will be the beautiful architectural piece I imagined when I first laid eyes on it. The other trees we planted that fall were five Arborvitaes (Thuja occidentalis ‘Emerald’) along the backyard perimeter. Since then two have died and been replaced, one was torn out by a backhoe (hazard of living in a developing neighborhood), and one had such a terrible case of bagworms last year that I wasn’t sure it was going to make it. (Not a great first season – lol – no wonder my husband thinks all I do is kill plants). Fortunately that bagworm infested tree did make it and three years later we are left with three nice looking, healthy Arborvitaes which have only grown about two inches in height but have almost doubled in width. J
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| Singleseed Contorted Hawthorne |
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| Emerald Arborvitae |
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