extreme weed

I kind of forgot to post this earlier.

Extreme weed. No, it’s not a new product coming out of Colorado. It’s just how last Saturday got a little sidetracked.

See, after we ripped out the hedge of doom and planted some rose bushes, we haven’t really done much with our front landscaping. I pretended the weeds were landscaping (green is green, right?), but it was looking pretty bad, so I sucked it up and decided to weed before continuing in-house projects.

As I started filling a Target bag full of the useless stuff, Mike came out and started poking around the rock-filled dirt. My spider sense started tingling. Something bad was about to happen. Our neighbors were using our driveway to unload bags of river rock to fill in some washout for their landscaping, and I don’t know if this was the ultimate factor or what … but Mike got that bee in his bum and started to dig out the crescent area.

Each stroke of the shovel came with the awful metal-against-rock scratch from all the little rocks in there.

Sigh.

Yep, we were digging ourselves deep on this one. While Mike dug, I started raking up old mulch, debris, and rock in the big area and loading them into any bucket, box, pot, or trash can I could find. It was dirty, muddy work, since it had been raining all week. Mike took a “break” at one point to mow while I kept digging, raking, scooping, and pulling up more layers of landscaping fabric.

It looks like each previous owner just landscaped over one another, so we inherited the quagmire. Go us!

After mowing, Mike began washing out the buckets of rock/dirt by filling our old dorm, mesh trash cans and hosing them down. It created a muddy mess, of course, but then we could reuse the rock by the service box, since it’s really difficult to mow around. 

Rocks picked out of front dirt, washed by Mike, transferred to service box

I had my fun playing in the big dirt pile from the crescent. Mike had drilled holes into a bucket, so I could dump dirt in there and shake it out (leaving the rocks in the bucket), but everything just seemed to clump up with the damp.

So, I resorted to picking rocks out, then scooping loose, rock-free dirt back into the crescent. This may have involved a Summer Shandy and Pandora to get me by. At least I was in the shade of our big tree, so the day was pleasant, if tedious.

The leftover dirt mix from the front was used to back-fill around the foundation. It’s not a true re-grade, but it should help at bit. At a little after 5, we decided to quit. 

However, now we had completely exposed dirt and rain in the Sunday forecast. There was no way we’d be able to put in pavers and finish planting before then, so we decided to put fresh mulch down in the morning before the storms. It’s not the most efficient way of doing things, but it’ll keep the front from becoming a muddy swamp.

Sunday morning we dragged our sore bodies to Lowe’s and loaded up 16 bags of mulch in our two cars (didn’t feel like de-boating the trailer). Sprinkles taunted us, but we hauled butt home and started dumping and raking. For the first time ever, we had more mulch than we needed (instead of making multiple trips to the store). 

It was a pain in the butt - but it was worth it! The front looks much tidier and we should have an easier time planting and bricking (after we rake the mulch away from designated spots). While it means we made zero progress on painting over the weekend, we're glad we did it.

Of course, after I took the pictures, the rose bushes started blooming again. We plan to brick pave the crescent and continue a path to the bench. And plant stuff.