06/09/2010
Dying Roses?
As quickly as they came, they've gone. Within a week, not one rose is left and the leaves are full of holes and spots. I sprayed the plant with some Neem Oil spray but too little too late I'm afraid.
Baby Steps
A little more mulching and discovering, but still no decision on the fate of the violets.
First Pass.
If you can make it past the violets, we welcome you to our home. Hand-painted floor mat by my mother, Robyn.
The Yard Plan.
Step 1: Pulling weeds and mulching perimeter of the main bed and northeast border.
This plot seems to have the least amount of violets and the most obvious tall blooming flower growth. We decided a quick spruce up would be to at least start pulling what we KNEW were weeds. Dandelions, anything that appears evil or ugly, those giant trunked plants that you can't pull out of the ground, etc. Then we mulched over the bare spots that appear to have had mulch before, with my favorite black Scotts NatureScapes, and added border edging to clean it up and hold the mulch in around the sidewalk. We won't be putting mulch up against the house, but down by the sidewalk, it really seems to make the greenery get some dramatic curb appeal. We still haven't decided what to do with the millions of giant violets that fill in every nook and cranny. Keep or pull? And the Hostas are fenced in there by some kind of creeping vines and groundcover in addition to the violets.
Moved In
By the time we moved in, you could no longer see the ground in front of our porch. A patch of old bare mulch wrapped around the front of what was predominantly wild violets. The hostas in the back were getting huge, but you couldn't see them from the street, or even the sidewalk. Some gorgeous huge Salvias popped their purple heads up out of the violets and the fragrant honeysuckle bushes were blooming. We hung a few shady pots on the porch and stared confusedly at what the previous owner called "permaculture".
The front patch of lawn near the street seemed like a lost cause. Dandelions, crabgrass, and clover from beginning to end. But some huge native flowers were popping up (coneflowers, salvia,?) and we wondering what else might be under the carpet of violets, and did he really mean to do that? We still aren't sure what to do at this point. We barely know what is a weed and what is a wildflower, let alone what is invasive,
Closing Day Eve
With Dandelions big as the baby, we decided to mow the lawn the night before closing day! We snuck over there armed with our rental house's lawn mower in the back of a neighbor's minivan, some trimmers, and weeding gloves and got to work. We just couldn't bear the idea of waiting one more day!
Sale Pending
A month before we closed, we would drive by the house on occasion and noticed rapid changes to the landscape. The owner hadn't been around for at least six months, and it didn't look like he did much the previous year to maintain the yard. April 2010 showed a lot of changes in the yard, but we still hadn't closed yet so we would drive by and worry about what the weed-fest would look like by the time we were able to do anything about it. At the same time, it was exciting to see a lot of really nice plants and flowers coming up. I snuck by one day and took a bunch of photos to email my mom to get some ideas on how to plan for the evergrowing weeds in the garden and lawn. We still had a few weeks before we could move-in.
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