a few more plants

We’re still putting off starting any of the larger projects that we have planned for the season, instead knocking out some of the fun and high-impact things that we can do in a day or so. This weekend this meant planting and mulching out front.

As can not be stated with enough emphasis, our yard was a ghetto jungle when we bought the house. There was a chain-link fence around the front with years of ivy and random growth woven through it. No maintenence had been done on the yard in at least a year; there was no grass and the several varieties of weed-tree were easily 10 feet tall. There was an enormous view-blocking, hide-behind-and-mug-someone bush beside the steps. Scattered throughout this were dozens of 40oz. beer bottles, broken glass, condom wrappers, and scraps of soiled clothing. Our yard was gross, an eye-sore.

The yard in the beginning. (Aug.2003)

Our first job was to clear the yard of the fence and random stupid plants. This has been an ongoing process… It wasn’t until we went to plant the shrubs that we dug out the last post from the chain-link fence. There are still a few scruffy trees along the side that we’re leaving in place until we can get more involved in the plan for that part of the yard. These scruffy trees also shade a set of day lillies, something planted intentionally by some unknown person back before the invention of crack cocaine. We’ve done enough clearing, though, that we’ve been able to start adding back good things.

The new shrubs and monkey grass.

This weekend we crossed some aesthetic line, whereas the front yard became a coherent and pleasing space. We’d planted the crape myrtles our first full summer in the house (2004). The next year we planted the thundercloud plums along the sidewalk, put the planters on the (sad 2×4) porch, and planted the strugglng phlox. This year already we’ve planted the dogwood and pulled the fence up to behind the crape myrtles. Now we’ve planted 4 shrubs in front of the porch and monkey grass beside the steps. In addition, we mulched all of the trees and the shrubs. We’ve set up something that will be nice, now all we have to do is keep everything alive…

We bought the plants Friday night after R. got off of work. It was a nice early evening at the Great Big Greenhouse , walking through the rows of plants, pulling red wagons full of shrubs and grass. One of us was so eager to see the new stuff in the ground that we ended up planting the shrubs while it got dark outside, until it was just late enough to be kind of weird. It was nice to wake up the next morning and have them planted already, though.

liriope spicata aka monkey grass aka creeping lilyturf

The thundercloud plum trees have bloomed and gone to leaf already. The dogwoods around the area are blooming, hopefully ours will be thriving at this time next year. The crape myrtles bloom in late summer and so will the monkey grass . The monkey grass is supposed to spread and ought to provide a nice border between the yard and the steps.