Backyard Lawn Update

I covered the front lawn in my previous post, now on to the backyard. Considering how the lawn looked after last year, I had no idea what to expect this spring, but my expectations where low. Well, I must say that I'm impressed! Still far from perfect, it's at least somewhat beginning to look like a lawn again!

I think this area will need some love this fall.

Another sparse area.

Kinda looks lawnish!

Utter barefoot bliss. This patch is the best!

Another area that needs some love.

I transplanted this patch by the brick in order to help
prevent erosion in this area during heavy rain. Need to
transplant some more.

And this is my favorite surprise. I noticed these little grasslings coming up in some of the bare areas throughout the lawn. While I'm not certain (yet), I think that these were actually from seed heads of the grass from when I mowed it last. It was seeding at the time and I wondered it it might be possible for those seeds to survive and germinate. I think some did!

New grasslings sprouting in a bare area!

Now that I'm aware I'm going to try to keep the lawn well watered and hope these little guys can survive the summer! I'll note that not all bare areas had so many sprouting, but I did see some in other areas of the lawn. It'll be interesting to see how things progress; perhaps there are more seeds that haven't germinated yet.

Daisies transplanted

It's been a while since I've posted progress on the daisy grow kit. I was a bit later than the directions called for, but I finally transplanted the daisies from the daisy grow kit to a larger pot. The plant was wanting to grow bigger, but just couldn't in the pot it was in. Once I got it out of the pot, I could see that the roots were very thick at the bottom. So now they have a new home in a pot on our back deck:

Daisies in new pot.

I hope that they are happier with the extra space, and also with more sun light being outside (still not exactly full sun, though). I'll be happy if just one of them blooms - I'm not quite sure how long it's supposed to take for that, but we'll see.

Lots of mulch.

Today we had a special delivery of 10 cubic yards of mulch in our driveway. I put down a 8x10 foot tarp and it is completely buried.

10 cubic yards of mulch.

 A big pile of work next to my new wheelbarrow.

I finished up for the night a bit ago at around 9 because I couldn't see much anymore and I was being swarmed by mosquitoes. I came home from work early at 4 so I could get to work on it. Today reached a high of 87 degrees and was very humid (70 degree dew point) - it was great.

I got the Calum Memorial Garden mulched first, then pretty much the whole front yard, and then part of the side. I still have some areas in the backyard that I plan to mulch, but I need to pull some stuff first. I think I might end up with some extra.

However, this seemed like a logical time to make some changes so I could mulch some more areas... I ended up pulled up the other 2 holly bushes (they were in the worst shape of them all), so now we have no more holly bushes. And I was very close to pulling up the overgrown bushes in front of the window, on the left in this picture:

Current front yard landscaping (you can see the new mulch on the left).

But I held off... for now. My wife and I discussed it and I think we're going to pull it up along with creeping juniper next to it (I'm not strongly opposed to it, but my wife doesn't care for it, and it is probably the area of the yard that gets the most sun, so it has potential to house some sun-loving plants). I don't have much planned other than removing them and mulching, though, and that's kind of a problem. Here's a visual of my current thinking:

The game plan.

Remove the two bushes and split the decorative grass into two and transplant them over to that area. The problem with the decorative grass where it is now is that it's too big and blocks the view of the rose bush behind it next to the garage. It also blocks a sprinkler head that is there. I know "twos" aren't typically a good design, but I feel like it would look better than keeping it as one. Perhaps I could break it into three, or plan a third type of grass with it. I don't know. Or maybe this is all just a bad idea. The upside is that it would give us some of the more sunny areas to plant other things.

I think I'm going to do it. And if worst comes to worst, we can always try again.

Here's a rough idea of what I'm thinking:

What the executed plan might look like.

If this is accurate (and it's probably not), then the grass may not be enough to block the view of the irrigation system back-flow valve that sticks up about a foot and a half or two. We may need something a bit taller.

Here is a blank canvas for pondering ideas:

What should fill that void?

I'd say that area gets part to full-ish sun. Anyway, I don't know what to do... time to sleep.

Unplanned plant purchases

Today we went to the Indianapolis Museum of Art gardens to enjoy the nice weather. And it was lovely. I walked around the gardens taking pictures of the names of various plants that were planted in areas that seemed to have similar lighting conditions to areas of our yard, mostly shaded to part sun. I'll save those for another post someday as they aren't too terribly exciting. But what is exciting is that we purchased some plants today! This was entirely unplanned. We ventured into the plant store that they have on the grounds and we couldn't resist purchasing some. Then since we needed some potting soil, we stopped at another gardening shop on the way home, and of course I couldn't help myself again and purchased even more. I don't have photos of all of the tags of the plants yet, but here's a photo of them:

New plants!

A total of 15 - better keep me away from plant stores or we'll go broke rather quickly.

I do, however, have plans for the majority of them. Most of them will end up in small garden that we are planting in memory of our son who died at birth in a miscarriage earlier this year. The spot we chose for this garden is next to the deck in the back yard. It's a shady location that gets an hour or two of direct sun a day, thus most of the plants we purchased are shade tolerant or partial sun. I like them. There's something about shade loving plants. They just seem more peaceful to me for some reason and I think for the purposes of this garden that is fitting as there was nothing more peaceful than looking into the eyes of our son. We named him Calum Saul - Calum meaning "resembling a dove" and Saul meaning "one who was prayed for". One of the plants I found is called "Praying Hands" Hosta and I just had to get it - the leaves of the plant are folded upward together and I guess someone thought that looks like praying hands - I don't know if I really see that, but I got it for the name anyway. We also got a couple of bleeding hearts - one that has red and white flowers and another that are all white.

Other than the plants for the memorial garden, I also got some annuals for our patio that I'll put in a pot (the yellow and orange flowers on the right in the photo). I don't remember what they're called.

So when we got home, the work began. The future Calum Memorial Garden is currently home to a large hosta and an intermingled mess of pachysandra and lily of the valley. He's a "before" photo:

Future Calum Memorial Garden location.

This is also the location where I planted the phlox last year. I'll be transplanting that very soon to a more sunny location.

We began by carefully digging up and separating the pachysandra and lily of the valley. And you heard me right - I said "we" - I am overjoyed to say that my wife decided to join me in this project! It was wonderful having her out there with me and I told her that she looks like a natural gardener. I'm hoping that this is the beginning of a shared love for gardening!

Once we had dug them all up, my wife began the task of transplanting some of the pachysandra to a couple other areas of it in our yard that were sparse. We're hoping that it survives and eventually fills in those areas. We still have quite a bit of it left and of course there's also the pile of lily of the valley plants. I'm not sure if we'll try to transplant those somewhere else or not. We obviously didn't get to it today, so we may lose our opportunity anyway.

While she was planting the pachysandra, I dug up the hosta and moved it to the north side of the house. I ended up splitting it in two and replanting it in two spots there. I have plans to create a walkway through  for that area connecting the front and back yard. My idea is to fill the area with shade loving plants (the area is full shade) and there are already a number of hostas planted there. We'll see if the new hostas are able to get re-established there. The soil is very compacted and contains a good amount of clay and roots from nearby trees. It was difficult to dig the holes.

So after a good day's work, the Calum Memorial Garden is almost ready for planting. The only things left are to transplant phlox and possibly the other hosta (in the upper right of the photo). I noticed that I forgot to purchase some forget-me-nots (the irony...), so I need to remember to plan a spot for those in the garden once we get to planting it; if the weather isn't too rainy, we should be able to do that tomorrow!

Ponding improvement

The area near the driveway where I transplanted some grass a few days ago seems to be ponding less now during heavy rain.

A shot during the rain showing much less ponding.

There is a new area of ponding closer to the driveway now, but it's small and I can probably transplant some more there to improve it. Also I think mulching the area by the decorative grass should improve that area as well. I'm planning on ordering a truck full of mulch soon.

Grass transplanting

When I did the front yard grass project last year I noticed that some grass had started growing in the flower beds from seeds that had landed there. I decided to leave it and allow it to grow and eventually transplant to any bare patches.

Well, it was growing very well and starting to not look very good because I couldn't mow it, so I decided to try and transplant some of it.

Most of it I moved to down by the road where there were some very bare spots where the seed didn't grow for some reason.

Grass transplanted to near the road.

I transplanted some to next to the driveway where another patch was that seems be a little lower than the surrounding ground that pools water when it rains. I tried to build it up a bit so it wouldn't do that, and also so there'd be grass there.

Grass transplanted to next to the driveway.

There are quite a few more patches left, and a little bit more grass that I can transplant. I left some that is growing in the flowerbed under the oak tree. It'll be more difficult to get that out since the daffodils are intermixed, so I saved that for another day.

Hopefully it takes!