Going yard

The outdoor spring projects continue unabated here at Monkey Central.  We have to get them done before it gets too hot and humid to be outside for very long.

This project was pretty minor after redoing the fence and the rail by the steps we redid last summer.  The lilac bush and the bird bath, our little friends Ozzy and Luli down the street call it a 'bird pool,' were already in place, so all we did was buy some landscaping stones and encircle them both in together.  Then I dug up what bit of lawn was left inside the new egg shaped enclosure and Sparky covered it over with straw, then cardboard, then we dumped three bags of topsoil over that.  In a few weeks she's going to plant herbs in there to replace the ones that died in the big cold snap we went through this past February.

The next project, digging up a row of monkey grass and extending the old rose garden out to the walkway in the back yard was a bit harder.

I dug out all the monkey grass, it came out in huge clumps, then I dug the top layer of regular grass up, and turned it over.  The grass used to cover an area about the size of our Scion XA.

 Once I got that dug up, turned over, and the bigger chunks busted up in to manageable clods, Sparky covered the area with cardboard and we tramped it down.  Then we whisked ourselves off to buy topsoil and compost/manure mix which she laid down while I recuperated from all my back breaking labors.

Then the rains came.  And the next day after the rains cleared out for a bit, Sparky realized we should have built the raised bed before she spread all the dirt out.  So we took some lumber had left from redoing the fence and the railing and we built a new raised bed.

Today the weather gods smiled upon us, thank you Thor!, and it was warm and sunny.  So I went and got some large pine bark nuggets and spread them around out newly built raised bed.  In a few weeks when the tomato and pepper plants are ready, Sparky is going to plant them in our new bed.

I like projects like this because they take up part of the lawn and less lawn means less I have to mow and more food we can grow.