Author: Liz Braithwaite

Seeding a Lawn

This story starts in the spring when the horribly pruned English walnut was removed from the front yard. This was wonderful. Now we have a beautiful view of Mount Timp, no more hazardous tree right over the house and way less clean-up. (Note: don’t harshly prune, or more accurately ‘top’ your trees because they are right by the house and might fall on it. Severe pruning will only make new wood weaker and the hazard will be worse.) Now the only problem was the front lawn was fine fescue. Fine fescue is a wonderful grass for the shade, but in full sun it just gets stressed.

I decided we needed to redo the front lawn. So I set to work trying to kill it. I sprayed it with round-up, waited a couple weeks and sprayed again. I did it a third, even fourth time. Expect the lawn had gone dormant because I was spraying  in the heat of the summer. Round-up kills only activily growing plants, and my lawn wasn’t growing so it wasn’t dying either. Eventually I gave up trying to kill certain patches and tilled it up.

Prepping the ground for seeding

By this time it was the end of the late summer/early fall seeding window. Late summer, or about mid-August to mid-September here, is the best time to seed a cool season grass. To prep the ground it was tilled and then rolled out with a sod roller. I seeded the lawn with a dwarf tall fescue, using a fertilizer spreader. With the spreader, I went up/down and across several times to make sure it had full, even coverage.  It came up, but  pretty spotty and some of the fine fescue came back too. So here is what it looks like now:

Patchy, new grass

I haven’t despaired. I re-seeded just yesterday. This “dormant seeding” should pop up in the spring and cover all the current bare spots. Plus grass will naturally fill in by itself. (That’s one of the reasons we plant it.) But I think I should have seeded it better in the first place. Here are some things I did wrong:

  • I should have tried and killed the lawn in the spring, not summer. It would have been actively growing in the spring and actually died. Instead, I still have fine fescue in the lawn. I could have also irrigated it more in the summer, but I’m not a huge fan of drowning lawns in water.
  • I didn’t quite irrigate enough right after I seeded. I think this is why it came up a little patchy. Next time I’ll irrigate two or more times a day right after seeding to make sure it doesn’t dry up and germinates more evenly.
  • I was a little late in seeding the lawn. I wish I had a few more weeks for the lawn to establish before winter.

The one good thing about this was I spend about $30 total for all the grass seed I needed along with renting the sod roller. Seeding grass is a lot cheaper and it can get good results if you don’t make the same mistakes I did. I recently saw a hydro-seeded lawn that was seeded a few weeks before I did mine. It is a nice, thick lawn right now. Seedling a lawn can take a bit more patience than sod, but it’s much cheaper and can be a lot easier. If you do seed and get bad results, just take advantage of the next seeding window (spring, late summer and late fall) and re-seed over the top like I did.

Fall Snow Walk

It snowed yesterday, big white flakes that didn’t stick. In honor of the snow we dug out the boots and mittens and took a walk. (The boots were completely unnecessary. But little toddler loves them and we are moving to Georgia in January so they might not get much use this year.) At first, toddler was a bit weary about the snow…

He soon realized the beauty of it though.

I had been eyeing the rose bushes to the side of the house. They seem to have no idea that winter is very shortly coming, and continues to push up new flower buds.


The leaves are just starting to come off the trees, which I think is extremely late this year. They are still lots of fun to jump in.

Asters and mums are out and very lovely. Not my favorite plants, except in late fall when everything else is fading away.

The winter side of things is starting to become  noticeable too, like these berries on a cotoneaster.

Even the juniper is already starting to have a purple hint to it.

I’ve been trying to work on my photography and liked how the pictures turned out on this walk. Hope you enjoyed them too.

Evenings

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Lately, I’ve been trying to avoid aimlessly watching TV at night as a family. This has required us to get pretty creative in how we do use our time, but I’m enjoying spending better time with my family. Some of the things we’ve done include:

Building a toy city

Making sock puppets

Going on walks (which it’s getting cold and dark to do this much more)

There’s also dancing, reading, and playing games. (Hide and seek or tag for Peter. Sometimes Joe and I will break out the chess set. I might actually beat him one day). We also were able to go to my brother’s basketball game, and visit some family and play bored games.

What do you do for fun in the evenings that keeps you away from the TV?

Baby Coming!

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I’m 19 weeks pregnant. And I’m just a little bummed because I do not get to find out what I am having for another two weeks. I want a boy to be friends with Peter and ’cause I like boys. And I want a girl so I can dress her up all cute (but not frilly!) and maybe ever make adorable girl dresses. And then I would have one of each. Hand-me-downs are a non-issue too. Peter’s got the boy stuff covered, and two baby girl cousins make up for the girl stuff. I’m good either way. (Note here: it is already a girl in my mind. But this “motherly intuition” could be completely wrong.)

What do you think?

And pregnancy has been amazing. I did sleep a lot the first trimester, but I wasn’t sick. And I have been moody, but not too bad. (Sorry to my dear Grandma who gets to deal with all my moods!) I’m also bigger than I was last time. Oh well.  I have maternity clothes from not only my pregnancy, but some from both my sisters as well. It’s awesome to start wearing some shirts I adored from last time, or admired on my sisters. Oh and I accidentally made myself a belly band while attempting this skirt. I cut the waist band too small for a skirt, but the tighter fit works well for a belly band.  I should have made one last pregnancy too: I’m liking it a lot.

Baby is moving, finally. I have been feeling strange things in my tummy for quite a while but it was never definitely baby movements until about a week ago. It’s the best part of pregnancy.

See? I have a belly.

Fall Pruning

I went to a neighborhood clean-up a few weeks ago and set to work cleaning up the yard of my 96 year-old neighbor. It was actually quite a pretty yard–she still goes out and gardens, although lately the weeds have gotten away from her. I set to work weeding and cutting back perennials and doing other fall task. Then I started freaking out because people were pruning horribly wrong.

There’s some basic pruning rules that were being ignored. I’m not going to try to overly explain them here, but they include cutting back to a bud or branch angle. This is apparently not common knowledge, but it should be. It is included in about every book or instruction on pruning, but maybe it also needs to be attached to every set of loppers sold at the store.  I went over and tried to show people how to do this a bit, and also cleaned up some cuts.

But the main mistake was that people were pruning in the fall. In our climate, fall is simply not a good time to prune. With winter coming, a fall pruning can make a lot of shrubs and trees less able to deal with the pending cold. Don’t add it to the list of fall clean-up tasks. The only pruning I would do is very gentle pruning of things like shrubs that are attacking all people who attempt to greet your front door. Mostly, just let it wait until later winter to early spring, or whenever is appropriate for the shrub. (That might require a bit of research. It’s better than killing or mutilating your plant.)

This is a lilac. I attempted to clean it up a bit, but it’s horrid. A shrub should never look like this and especially not in the fall. A good pruning right after it blooms should help it out more, but for now the damage is done.

Halloween

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Peter is finally old enough to celebrate Halloween. I  haven’t enjoyed Halloween since I dressed up in spandex as a super hero my freshman year in college. Really it’s been since my childhood. But now I have a little kiddo to dress up and take trick or treating and it’s much more fun. Peter was Peter Pan. Easy costume, and after watching the movie and getting the hat he was pretty excited about dressing up like Peter Pan too. We went to two ward parties for Halloween, carved and painted a pumpkin (that was also Peter’s first experience with paints), and took a ride on the Nightmare Express. (That was the best free Halloween activity I’ve been to. You go ride a model train, but they decorate it awesome.)

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Cleaning

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vacuum

I was thinking I’d write about the way I clean. There seems to be a lot of books, columns and other advice on how to keep a clean home. I’ve never found it that hard, just interesting. I’d thought I’d share some of my tips.

Clean up after yourself. Don’t leave the dishes until later or ignore the spill on the couch. Clean up after one project before moving on to another, etc. I can’t imagine getting behind on dishes or anything else for that matter. Not cleaning up after myself is way too much work. For instance: I can wipe off the spill on the stove in about 10 seconds when I do it, or wait until it gets caked on and spend five minutes scrubbing at it. My husband will help with the dishes right after dinner, but he’s not home the next day if I leave them in the sink. Cleaning up after myself also takes very little time (five minutes here and there), and avoids hours of built up work later on.

Be organized. Have a place for everything. Get rid of stuff you don’t use or at least put it out of the way. (We’ve moved a lot and it’s really helped eliminate our junk.) And everyone has piles: the trick is to find a place where the piles are out of the way. I stack stuff on my computer desk, but it’s underneath where no-one can see. Go through everything occasionally too.  I like to organize, although I never stress too much. My drawers can still be cluttered, I just want to know that I can find scissors in there or have a place to put my half-finished sewing project that’s not on the kitchen cabinet.

If you can do those first two things the house stays decently clean. Really, how hard is it to clean up after yourself? Not rocket science there. For organization, it’s also not that hard. If you struggle, just go to somewhere like Ikea to get ideas. Getting rid of stuff helps tons too.

Now for all the other cleaning tasks, I’ve tried two different things and like them both. It just depends on my mood.

Method 1: Besides cleaning up after yourself, do one extra task a day. For me this is usually divided into bathrooms, kitchen, dust/vacuum, and laundry. Sometimes I’ll put in an organizing day, or a day for an extra cleaning task like cleaning carpets.

Method 2: Pick one day and just get everything done. This usually takes up less time total, but more time on the day I do it. I usually get all out of order with the way I do tasks, but it cuts down on the time. For instance, last time I cleaned the kitchen cabinets, dusted, and cleaned bathroom surfaces with a multi-purpose cleaner. Then I swept, vacuumed (which eliminated the use of a dustpan), and finished by mopping. I also cleaned up a few dirty places on the carpet when I was done. I focused on a piece of cleaning equipment instead of a room, which I think saves a lot of time. The broom only comes out once etc.

I still always like new ideas. Even though I don’t struggle much with cleaning I like to read things I come across and always find new ideas. So go ahead share your thoughts on the subject.

Tree Staking

I went to a park up in Ceder Hills (the park was really neat with a triple story playground). While there I noticed a gorgeous tree with a trunk that looked like this:

This is after I attacked the girdling wire with a pair of hand pruners. The tree was not badly staked to begin with, but that was years ago. They did cover the wires, but the material they used has degraded, and the wire has started to grow into the tree. Without intervention, the tree will be girdled and die. Unfortunetly this is pretty common.

I wrote about tree staking a while ago, and how I staked a few trees that needed staking. If you go and look, it is very different than what you normally see. The most common mistakes made with tree staking is:

  • Staking too often: Many trees simply don’t need staking. A tree should only be staked if it is wobbly or tilting to one side.
  • Staking too tightly: When finished the tree should still be able to move about, just prevented from tilting too far in one direction.
  • Leaving it on too long: Staking material should always be removed after the first year. That’s the main problem behind the staking job above.

I contacted the parks department and they at least said they send someone out to see if the trees are properly staked. The trees actually shouldn’t be staked at all anymore–but hopefully the problem will get fixed. Better than my pair of hand pruners did.

Fall Garden Finale

I  dug out my veggie garden over a week ago. The first freeze is coming tonight, which is several week past the average. It has been cold enough to harm the cucumbers and melons, but the tomatoes were still going strong when I yanked them. I was done with tomatoes and had extra time and beautiful weather, so I put the garden to bed. Felt wonderful. I had a large tomato forest going on. The tomatoes chocked out the peppers and eggplants nearby. The yellow pear was all over everything. Some branches were over 6 feet long–I didn’t bother to keep up with staking and pruning so it was a lovely mess I was happy to tear out.

Pulling out the Garden

Looking back on the year, I  loved my Cherokee Purple tomatoes. My other varieties, romas, fourth-of-july, and yellow pear also did well. The other heirloom I planted, Great White was a little late but good after it started producing. All my peppers and eggplants did not produce well because of poor placement. The potatoes did okay, but I think potatoes had been planted in the same spot for too many years beforehand (not my garden before so I didn’t know). I think they got a wilt disease early on and would have done better with some proper crop rotation. Onions and leeks were less than spectacular, they mostly didn’t ever catch on after transplanting. The blue hubbard and butternut squash did great. The blue hubbard squash are decorating my front porch. It might take a while to break into them. I planted two cucumbers–a striped Armenian and a regular aremenina. We had loads of cucumbers even with horrible powdery mildew.  The best melon wasn’t the two I planted (they did okay, not great), but a volunteer that sprang up and produced eight good melons. Beets did well, lettuce was good in the spring, and the chard was always there, I just didn’t bother to pick it.

That was a bit long, but it was a great garden year. I’m also glad it’s over now. Time for new projects.

Two Week Walk Challenge

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So apparently it’s already been two weeks since the walk challenge from This Grandmother’s Garden. I didn’t necessarily go on a walk everyday, but I did go outside. It was beautiful. I made it hiking three times–once up to Battle Creek just up the hill, once on several hikes scattered through Nebo Loop and the final hike on Saturday to Silver Lake up American Fork Canyon. Fall comes and goes so quickly and I’m glad I didn’t miss it. The one thing I do still miss is the maple of Cache Valley. We moved away from there two years ago and in some ways all the fall leaves were a little disappointing because it wasn’t the red maple forests that are up there. I did discover that scrub oak does not necessarily just turn brown. I found orange, gold, and even bright red scrub oak that made up for the lesser amount of maples.

Many of my walks also involved parks due to the nature of having a two-year-old to entertain. At one park I was pleasantly surprised to find some old pear trees. I have no idea what varieties they are–but they included Asian-type and other delectable finds. I went ahead a grabbed a bundle and have been enjoying them at home. I also found gorgeous sunsets, changing leaf colors, fall blooming flowers, and interesting things for my two-year-old who usually accompanies me.

Here’s just some of the pictures I took. There are more in previous posts too.