we don't need no water...

Let the MotherFcuker burn!

I'm speaking of my grass...and really my plants in general.

We have not had rain here at the house for SO MANY DAYS!  It's rained all around us, but not in our little Village.

The grass is all burned up - especially all the new grass we planted in the spring.  Even one of my trees; the paper birch has lost half of its leaves - they turned yellow (which they normally do in October) and they fell off the tree.  I'm making a prediction - Fall Colors will be early this year.  

The ground is so dry that there are cracks that are literally 1/2 inch thick. Everything is screaming water, Water, WATER!!!!!!

We check the weather channel everyday just hoping that something would be coming our way - but even when it looks like there might be rain, it never does.  

Since we've been home from our trip to Seattle, it's only rained on July 17th (Romeo Garden Walk) - it was a freak storm that lasted about an hour and then it was blue skys and very humid afterward.  Then it waited until we had our Annual Pot-luck and rained for almost an hour then - that was July 31st.  One more time it spit some raindrops and that was around August 8.  Other than that - Nothing!

Everything is suffering.  I do some watering, here and there, but as I've read recently, the nice lush green grass of yester-year is growing out of fashion to the Green Movement.  So, people are letting their grass go dormant in the summer.  I'm doing it too, not that I like the look, because I DON'T!, but I also wouldn't want a huge water bill (especially since I only work 3 days a week - not good on the pocket book).  I've only cut the grass once since we've been back from vacation; so once in 6 weeks.  I just don't want all of my scruffy looking plants to die too.

Oh and another thing that's happening that never happened before - we have MOLES!  They are really screwing up what is left of the lawn.  We've purchased a stake that beeps every 30 seconds that is supposed to drive the moles away.  It's not working yet.  They say to give it several weeks, but summer will be over by then and I would only assume that the mole problem goes away with it.  I'm going to purchase the mole chasing windmills - I know they worked for my mom.

I hope next year we have a much wetter summer.

UPDATE: Just had RAIN!!!  Along with a tornado warning and sirens.  Now the AC is not blowing because the power tried really hard, three times to go out.  Oh, and again it only lasted less than an hour.  Not enough to do much for the grass and plants.

the latest project...

We had friends come over tonight.  They've been friends of ours for the past 7 years.  We invited them over to have a BBQ on our new deck over the garage.  As I lead Roberto up to the deck, walking on a couple of carefully placed boards that were in the middle of a sea of newly laid grass seed, he said "This has been a perpetual job - you are never done...never, never, NEVER!"

That is the truth, it seems.  We b!tch about it all the time...we are NEVER done.  We've been working on this house and yard continually for the last 5 years (well, it will be 5 years in about 15 days).  In the middle of jobs, Jerome likes to remark about how the neighbors aren't out working in their yard - they must be out having fun.  Well, if you know Jerome, he just can't go out and "have fun" all the time, it would drive him nuts.  He also can't stay inside "lazing around" (another thing he likes to remark about when we are in the middle of a project; he presumes that a lot of people do this), he has to be doing something nearly at all times.

Well, with that being said, here's some shots of the latest project we've been working on...in the yard that is never, never, NEVER done.

When we first moved in, this location in the yard held two ponds.  The ponds had fish, which is nice and calming - but this was not a very good location for a pond.  It's right under several trees; one being a messy Magnolia.  The Magnolia leaves never seem to compost and so we decided that we'd move the ponds from under the tree.  So far we've only managed to remove the ponds and rocks and fill the holes with dirt.

These stepping blocks were left here by the previous owner.  They were all over the yard when we moved in.  We picked them up and stored them for the past 5 years.  Two weeks ago, we decided that we'd make a shaded sitting area under the tree.

We framed out the general area using 2X4's that were left over from the garage construction.  We used the 3-4-5 rule of measuring for a 90 degree angle (If you have a triangle with one 4-foot side, one 3-foot side and a hypotenuse (diagonal) of exactly 5 feet, then the angle opposite the hypotenuse will be exactly 90-degrees...it's nice to be married to an engineer!).  We made sure that the 2X4's were level so that we could use another 2X4 to measure the height of the blocks; making sure we were always level all the way across.

We used a couple of paver bricks as spacers to keep the same distance between the blocks.

Once we were done laying the blocks (we brought in a bunch of dirt to raise the area in order to keep everything level), we filled the area in between the blocks with more topsoil - sort of like grout.  Then we watered the area so that the dirt would settle and then brought in more top soil.

We had decided that we would try to plant grass in the area between the blocks.  We'll see if it works, since this area almost never sees sunlight.  We haven't had the best of luck with grass in this area.  The second year we lived here, we had the whole yard sodded (paid big bucks), by the next spring, grass only grew in certain areas.  In other areas, it seemed like it just didn't take.  You could still pull up the rolls of sod nearly intact.  And the Magnolia leaves killed off the grass underneath it.

We purchased several bags of Scotts PatchMaster, which has grass seeds mixed in with a paper mulch.  One bag is supposed to cover 300 sq. ft.  Once the paper mulch gets wet, it makes the seeds more stable and they don't fly/blow/wash away.  We've used it on the area that was trenched up last year to bring the electricity to the garage.  We are so far pretty happy with the results.  If it doesn't work under the Magnolia tree, in between the blocks, then we will consider using moss.

After I was done laying the grass seed paper mulch between the blocks, we needed to seed the rest of that area, since it was totally torn up when the garage was built.  Here's Jerome making sure the sprinkler gets all the newly laid seed.

This is not the only area that will need to be seeded.  We are doing it in smallish sections.

If you enlarge this picture, you'll see the boards that I led my friend Roberto on when bringing him to the deck this evening.

We are not done with this project.  We still have to remove the wood frame and pour the quikrete  around all four sides - hopefully this will keep it tight...at least the outer blocks.  We bought the quikrete at Lowe's on Saturday night with the hopes of doing it on Sunday...this didn't happen,...but it will this week.