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: 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: busted, cash, confined, drill, flood, grass, hoosegow, narcotics, pots, seeds, sick, two-by-four
I was up off the couch for a few minutes to take my medicines, and I saw out the window that it was raining again, and the plastic pots where the milkweed seeds have been contentedly enjoying the required cold were flooding over. Ack! I had planted in pots with no drainage holes in them! The instructions said “moist”, not flooded! What if the seeds washed out of the pots altogether! Almost $20 could be wasted!
I am sick, I should forget it, and go back to bed.
No! I can handle this crisis. I’m still on prescription narcotics! And Jennifer is upstairs working and will never know. I grabbed my wool hat, gloves, and heavy coat, shuffled to the garage, got my drill and went out back, in the rain, to the pots to drill holes in the bottom to try to drain the excess water and save the seeds.
It only took a minute or two. I was almost done when I heard a loud angry knock on the inside of the nearest window. I looked up and sure enough, there was Jennifer standing at the window with a look that might as well have been another two-by-four to the head. Her face said quite clearly, “The first time you get off the damn couch in a week is to go out in the cold and rain and drill holes in flower pots!?!? You could be doing dishes, or taking out trash like that bag of blood-soaked cotton balls, tissues, and pill packs next to the couch that has filled to overflowing over the last week.” I was busted. Caught red-handed. Headed for the hoosegow. Confined to quarters. Under house arrest. I tried to plead poor judgment, but that was already rather apparent.
Filed under: Cash for Grass | Tags: blood, cash, Christmas, college, drugs, ear, ER, football, God, grass, landscape, narcotics, oozing, pain, playoffs, prescription, sinuses, Wii
Sometimes it seems that life just slaps you upside the head with a two-by-four.
Christmas Eve my sinuses got all stuffed up, and so did my ear. I thought I was OK and didn’t worry about it much. Late at night it starting hurting. By Christmas morning I was rocking, moaning and holding my head in my hands in pain with blood oozing out my ear. The family was fairly unanimous that this was not a good sign, and I was off to the ER. I was diagnosed with a raging infection and ruptured eardrum, and have been out of commission since. No landscaping for the last week, or likely for the next week or two. So much for the productive vacation plans. I haven’t even had the energy to play with my kids on the new Wii.
On the bright side, I have watched about 198 hours of college football, which I enjoy though I still want a playoff system. I guess this is God’s way of telling me that vacation is supposed to be for laying on the couch watching TV, not attacking a list of ambitious projects, and like it or not that is what I am going to do even if God has to get me all woozy with prescription narcotics to get me to do it.
Ow. OK, God, I’ll go back to the couch and turn the TV on again.
Filed under: Cash for Grass | Tags: blue, break, cash, clevelandii, compression, coupling, grass, pickaxe, pipe, PVC, sage, salvia, sprinkler, water
AAARGH!
I was carefully digging one little hole for my last salvia clevelandii (blue sage), when a PVC water line snuck into my hole and jumped in front of my pickaxe. I had to carefully excavate a large hole around it without breaking it further in order to get to the damage. There were actually three parallel water lines all next to each other. Fortunately only one decided to commit suicide. I don’t know if the broken line feeds the drip irrigation systems I still need in the side or back of the house, or the sprinklers I don’t care about anymore. I decided not to cause a geyser to find out.
I went out and bought a compression coupling to try to fix it. The coupling looked barely long enough for the break, which was about 2 inches wide, but it seemed to work. I turned the water on, and nothing exploded, so either the break was to a disabled sprinkler system and I don’t care, or I actually fixed it. I filled it all back in and planted the sage on top of the “repair”. Since I didn’t start until noon today, the incident basically cost me all progress for the day and any possibility of finishing before Christmas, plus $4 for the coupling.
Filed under: Cash for Grass | Tags: cash, Christmas, grass, planting, plants, rock, seeds, yard
Getting closer
Filed under: Cash for Grass | Tags: butterfly, Butterfly Encounters, cash, cold, front, germinate, grass, kids, milkweed, rain, refrigerator, seeds
I did plant the five beautiful types of milkweed seeds we ordered from Butterfly Encounters. Strangely, the kids did not volunteer to go out in the backyard in the rain to help me. The instructions say the seeds need to sit in a cold, moist environment for several weeks before they will germinate. This being Central California, we rarely get “weeks” of cold weather, so either I plant them now or I will have to follow the “alternate instructions” and put them in bags of sand in the refigerator for a few weeks. I’m not sure the last idea would go over well with Jennifer, and I think I would have a tough time hiding a half-dozen bags of sand and seeds in the refrigerator without her noticing.
Milkweed Seeds Planted
Filed under: Cash for Grass | Tags: cash, decorating, festive, grass, landscaping, lawn, leaves, lights, rock, seeds, vacation
This Christmas I chose landscaping over putting up holiday lighting. Our house does not look very festive, but I do have a big pile of rock. Maybe I can build a rockman with a top hat and carrot nose. And I have a mound of grass in my courtyard that is starting to turn brown. Could I put a manger next to it and call it hay?
Today is the first day of a two week (forced) vacation for employees of my company. At least I will have all the time I need to finish what can be done on my landscape, plant all my seeds, and attend to a number of other household projects. How exciting! I finished putting in the plants I have and spreading rock around the infamous strip between driveways, except for the plants I can’t get yet or am growing from seeds that I have not yet planted. I got started on the far end of the main area formerly known as lawn. Rose helped by climbing up and down the rock pile, and occasionally piling up leaves and jumping on them.
Driveway Strip Finished
Driveway Strip Side ViewMain Yard Far Side
Main Yard Far End
Filed under: Cash for Grass | Tags: acorns, better, cash, grass, lobata, oak, plant, quercus, smaller, tree, valley
As I have noted, big nursery plants are expensive. Small plants are cheaper. Seeds are even cheaper. I wanted a single Valley Oak (quercus lobata) tree. The area coverage rating on one of these alone covers the enitre requirement for live plants for purposes of the City reimbursement forms! I gathered acorns a few weeks ago from a nearby tree, which was actually free, even cheaper than buying seeds. None of them sprouted – they just grew moldy and rotted. So I forked out $7 for this little guy I planted today.
Busy at work this week, so this is probably the only thing that will get done until Saturday.
Baby Valley Oak (acorn shell still attached)
Filed under: Cash for Grass | Tags: All Things Wild, blue-eyed grass, bluebells, butterflies, Butterfly Encounters, cash, grass, landscape, Larner Seeds, lawn, lupine, milkweed, monarch, monkeyflower, native, poppies, spring, yarrow, yellow-eyed grass
Sabrina found a web site through school called ”butterfly encounters” (www.butterflyencounters.com). It explains that monarch butterflies are endangered due to habitat destruction, such as the construction of our home by callous, cigar-smoking, real estate developers whose primary goal is the extermination of all that is good and natural. I am paraphrasing.
The butterfliers encourage us to plant milkweed – the attractive native plant which is the sole food source for monarch butterfly caterpillars. Coincidentally, they sell milkweed seeds, and they post beautiful photos of different types of milkweed in bloom. I am too inexperienced in botany to answer my wife’s philosophical question, “If it is so pretty, why is it called a ‘weed’?”
I spent $20 ordering seeds for a few varieties. My kids want monarch butterflies. How can I deny them? See, I can be flexible. I changed the plan. Interestingly, though, it is not easy to get the seeds to germinate. Another mini-project.
I am skeptical that butterflies will just show up if I plant this stuff, but Genelle (All Things Wild person) assured me that if we grow milkweed, monarch butterflies really will come. And I don’t have to plow under an entire field of corn and wear a funny cap. I wonder what the caterpillars do to the plants’ weedy beautifulness. It all sounds cool and science-y. For the kids.
Update 12/16/08: Seeds are cheap. Dozens of seeds cost the same as one small plant, are cheaper to ship, and I’m not out $9 if I kill one. If I can grow them, my budget is in much better shape. I found a great source for native California wildflower seeds to go with my milkweed seeds, Larner Seeds (www.larnerseeds.com). I ordered poppies, yellow-eyed grass, blue-eyed grass, lupine, bluebells, monkeyflower, and rosy yarrow.
