Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Cash for Grass, check, government, milkweed, pile, plant, Roseville, seeds
We got the check from the city of Roseville this weekend. $700 to put in the bank. That sure feels good. Who would ever have guessed you could get a government check without having something really unfortunate happen to you first, or being in Congress!
That conlcudes our relationship with the City of Roseville for the time being, but the project continues to evolve. None of the plants have died yet.
As for the seeds, not one of the milkweed seeds has sprouted yet of any type. They have been in the dirt for about 8 weeks so far, so I expected at least a few of the early seeds to have started by now. Maybe the “cold stratification” outside failed and I killed them all. Of the wildflowers, the lupine and poppies have started coming up, some of them are a couple inches tall. The lupine were large seeds, with only a few in the pack. I think I got about 50% of them to start. Plenty of poppies. The yarrow and monkeyflower have also sprouted, and they are numerous but very tiny. Nothing yet of the bluebells, blue-eyed grass, or yellow-eyed grass.
Some of the other plants in the front are starting to show new growth. Others look like they are barely hanging on. My sod pile is also gradually decreasing in volume every couple of weeks. I’ll post more pictures soon.
Filed under: Cash for Grass | Tags: budget, cash, Cash for Grass, kids, lawn, milkweed, plants, rock, Roseville, seeds, wildflowers
main front ex-lawn
gate to street stepping stones
- driveway strip
- driveway strip from driveway
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Filed under: Cash for Grass | Tags: bird, border, Cash for Grass, feeder, finch, garden, landscape, mulch, netting, plants, rock, seeds, silence, wildflower, Zen, Zen rock garden
Much work done on the project over the long weekend. First, Rose and Calvin planted a couple hundred wildflower seeds carefully in seed trays in the backyard, which turned out to be a very labor intensive way to feed premium seeds to finches.
For round two, I protected the seeds with plastic netting, and also hung a bird feeder with finch seed nearby to try to distract them. ($27 for netting, feeder, and seeds, not counting wildflower seed losses)
Seeds with finch fence
I also managed to get all the rock mulch spread. Phase 1 is almost complete. All that is left is to put in the last handful of small plants, and finish the border, which will require about 20 linear feet of additional border rock.
The down side to buying all very small plants to save money is that they are so small at this point that it is hard to see them among the rock. The yard looks more like a zen rock garden than a living landscape. (If you are a zen master, I understand that a rock garden is also alive in its way, but it is not, therefore it remains noisily in silence.) I hope the plants not only survive but will fill in by late spring and give the appearance that I knew what I was doing.
Can you count the plants in the area which used to be lawn in the photo below?
Zen Rock Garden Replaces Lawn
Wrong. The correct answer is way more than that, and two of the ones you counted were actually boulders…
No, not quite that many, I still have to buy some, and the wildflowers are hopefully going to grow in the seed trays to be put in later…
Yes, that’s about right. Nicely figured.
Filed under: Cash for Grass | Tags: blue, cash, Cash for Grass, grass, pickaxe, pipe, PVC, repair, sage, water
Remember the pickaxe and water line thing? Apparently the broken line was to the drip system I still need. I know this because not long after turning it on the other day, a river bubbled up from underneath the blue sage I planted over the obviously unsuccessful repair.
Today was the first day I have worked on the yard since getting sick. My one task today was to do a full repair with no short cuts. This involved removing all the rock I had laid over a few square yards, unplanting the blue sage, and digging a hole big enough to bury a Honda Civic around the break so I could cut away the failed repair and inset a new piece of PVC.
Repaired pipe
After repair (looks same as before, but without river bubbling up from beneath)
Filed under: Cash for Grass | Tags: All Things Wild, Berkeley, California, Calphoto, cash, Cash for Grass, grass, landscape, las pilitas, native, photo, plants, wild
We got a flyer from the Cash for Grass program for a class at the library on landscaping with native plants. I thought this might be useful given that I know absolutely nothing about landscaping or plants, so I signed up, and also took my daughters, 8 and 10. About half the class were fellow “Cash for Grass” program participants. I think I was the only one planning to do all the work myself.
The class was led by Genelle, a young woman with the appearance and demeanor of a passionate environmental type who has found her calling. Dressed for gardening, her casual appearance belied her keen intelligence, education, and experience. Genelle runs her own small business called “All Things Wild” (www.alltingswildca.com). She consults with commercial landscapers, and also sells native plants at a local farmer’s market on Saturdays. She brought a dozen or so popular native plants so we could see them first hand. Where safe, my daughter Rose also smelled, felt, and tasted them. Genelle was great, the kids loved the class, and they are very excited to help with the yard. Also my daughters now want to grow up to be people who sell native plants at the farmer’s market. We’ll be visiting her stand soon to buy plants.
I also found some fantastic California native plant web sites.
The best is www.laspilitas.com. This is a nursery, but they post information and photos on almost every native California plant, whether they sell them or not, and they have an on-line store that carries many of them and will ship.
http://calphotos.berkeley.edu/flora/, run by the University of California at Berkeley, has more photographs from a variety of sources for almost every native plant, including data on where it grows and/or was found and photographed.
Surprisingly, the California Native Plant Society web site http://www.cnps.org/ was not much help as far as actual landscaping ideas and guidance.
I am now finally designing my new landscape, on actual paper.
Filed under: Cash for Grass | Tags: budget, cash, Cash for Grass, cost, estimate, grass, lawn, performance, plan, project
My wife asked me, “So, how much is this going to cost?”
“Before or after the reimbursement from the City?”
“Before.”
“Uh,” I responded intelligently.
“Well?”
I began running some calculations in my head based on my on-line research. I was rapidly simplifying the mental picture I was looking at for the finished product as I began coming up with estimates in my head that I knew would never fly. “About $1.50 to $1.75 per square foot,” I finally answered. This was a conservative estimate, in the sense that I was afraid that if I said anything higher my wife would nuke the project. Kind of like project estimates to management at my company.
“So about $1200 altogether?” Unfortunately, my wife minored in mathematics. And it’s not her first time dealing with a husband who embarked on a home project with ideas bigger than our wallet.
“Yes,” I replied, realizing that I now have my official budget by which my performance will be evaluated, the successful execution of which has consequences more serious than my employer’s performance review.
It is time to get my vision for the yard written down on paper and planned.
Filed under: Cash for Grass | Tags: big, cash, Cash for Grass, grass, neighbors, pile, sod, tree, ugly
The pile of grass in my front yard grew big and ugly enough that I felt self-conscious. My yard is a mess, and my neighbors are nervous. I have a small courtyard between my garage and front door where I have decided to stack the grass to get it out of sight from the street until I can get rid of it. I still don’t know how I will get rid of it.
I also still have no actual plan yet for reconstructing the yard, but the picture in my head continues to look very nice.
Here are a couple of photos of the grass extraction so far from the lawn, and the pile, now moved into the courtyard.
I am leaving the tree, making an exception to my “all native plant” theme. It is pretty, and perhaps more significantly it is pretty big.
My big honkin’ grass pile that all our friends and relatives will get to walk past when they come over for Thanksgiving dinner, aka “Fall Decor”:
Filed under: Cash for Grass | Tags: California, cash, Cash for Grass, catharsis, chaparral, construction, debris, garden, grass, grasslands, lawn, native, plant, plants, sod, trees
Today I began ripping out grass. I don’t have any plan made yet as for what specifically I will put back in it’s place, but the grass is on its way out.
I have a picture that looks very nice in my head of what this will look like when done, but nothing on paper. I have started doing research on native plants on-line. Did you know that less than 10% of California’s land area has ANY native (pre-European) plants left excluding trees? Almost all the grasslands, hills, chaparral and forests have either been replanted with or entirely overcome by invasive and non-native species. I feel I have embarked on a kind of sacred mission to help preserve a few remaining bits of California’s botanical history in my own little garden.
After a long day at work, feels good to be out with a pick and shovel, ripping out the lawn I have decided to oppose on moral grounds. The sod peels away easily, as the roots have barely penetrated the native clay and rock even after 8 years.
I am also learning something about the construction industry. Under the sod I am finding bits of pipe, nails, siding foam, soda cans and construction waste that our builder laid the sod over without cleaning up. Among the more interesting finds: a large broken mirror, a 2-foot length of heavy chain, a 30 pound slab of broken concrete, and a hole with several beer bottles which I hope were not left by people responsible for the structural integrity of my home.
I have also created a waste problem. What do I do with the sod I am ripping up? We have a “green waste” can that the city picks up every two weeks that I had planned to use. I filled it to the top with about 30 square feet of lawn. That’s means I’ve got about 16 months worth of grass at that pace of pickup. Hauling is not in the imaginary budget that goes with my mental pictures.
For now I am making a big pile in the front yard. In just an hour or so I ended up with 70 square feet of grass pulled, one full green waste can, one pile of grass, and 630 square feet to go…
Filed under: Cash for Grass | Tags: cash, Cash for Grass, firing, grass, landscape, lawn, lawn service, spanish
I fired the lawn people. It was not easy to do. No, not the emotional part – well, that too - but I mean really, technically, it was not easy to do. The guy I hired a year ago never comes anymore and the person that does come for him, a rather muscular older woman with a bright smile, does not speak any English.
I speak just barely enough Spanish to be able to have conveyed and confirmed that she understood that this was the last month I needed their services. Not much smiling involved at that point. I hope she understood that it was not her fault, but that there is just not going to be any lawn to mow anymore.
Filed under: Cash for Grass | Tags: California, cash, Cash for Grass, environment, funds, government, grass, Roseville
The application for this program turned out to be one form, downloadable, that can be filled it out in a few minutes. Surprisingly easy – kudos to Roseville! We sent the form in. Then we waited. For weeks. OK, now it was looking like government.
I decided to try to contact them, if it was physically possible. The City did have a web site with actual people to contact, Shane Reid and Lisa Amaral. These actual people responded promptly and helpfully, despite being in government. They responded that we were too slow and the program was out of money. But they were trying to get more funding due to the strong response for the program.
2 days later they called back and said they got funding for an additional 70 houses, and our application was accepted. Too cool! THEY called US, and they had actual MONEY! Either the drought situation here truly is dire, or Shane and Lisa are brilliant at working the bureaucracy, or both.
Now that we have been accepted into the program, we are reading the terms and conditions. This is a bigger commitment than I expected. The city inspected our yard and determined that my front lawn has 700 square feet of eligible grass. I have to complete the project within 6 months to get a reimbursement. I have to use drought tolerant plants. I have to remove or cap my sprinklers, but I can put in drip irrigation if desired. I have to replace the grass with plants that are rated on their chart with pre-established “coverage when mature” area. I have to use a mulch (no bare ground). I have to hop on one foot while I dig the holes with my teeth. OK, maybe not the last thing. Still, it’s a big deal.
When done, I have to close the process by sending back my list of plants and such that I installed, and they will confirm with another inspection. I agreed to the terms. The project begins.
