Landscape Bids

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I was recently asked to look over a few landscape bids for a friend of mine. The project was mostly a large stretch of  lawn. I was a bit taken back by some of the practices that they listed.

Bagged lawn clippings: All that specified how to do lawn care maintenance mentioned that they would bag and take away all the lawn clippings. It was stated like this was a good thing, preferable to other methods. Oh my. Basic good garden techniques: leave the clippings. They basically add the equivalent of a pound of nitrogen a year. As long as you are cutting the lawn regularly and using a good mulching mower they aren’t a mess. Even then, they disintegrate within a couple days. If anyone out there is still bagging, please stop. Your lawn will thank you.

Lawn spray program: This is included a four step fertilizer program, complete with weed killers, pre-emergent, grub killers, etc. Never mind that there isn’t actually any crabgrass or other annual weed problem in the lawn to necessitate a pre-emergent, or any widespread grub or insect problems.  As mentioned earlier, bagging clippings would add a pound of nitrogen, meaning one less fertlizer application is necessary. I still thing four step fertilizer programs (as seen advertised by fertilizer companies) is excessive. We’re not talking about a sports turf or heavily used lawn. Most of the lawn is hardly used. Two, maybe three applications a year would be sufficient to maintain a green healthy lawn. And wouldn’t it be great if one of those applications was actually a layer of compost? I also don’t like that the chemicals are going to be poured on, without monitoring for possible weed or insect problems that might be present first.

Those were my two main problems. I wish all companies would include more detail on their bids. Saying that the lawn will be maintained doesn’t give me much confidence that the company will actually be there no less than once a week making it look great. It was also interesting to see the bidding price. Anywhere from $8,000 to $1,500. The lowest was underbid, I’m wondering how they stay in business charging so little.

If you are thinking of doing landscaping, seriously consider looking into buying this software. It makes the whole bidding process a lot more manageable, and includes information on sustainable practices.

Big News

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So this past week we had our twenty week ultrasound. The baby is healthy and normal and we found out that it was a BOY. It is ultimately what I wanted so I’ve very happy. Peter gets a new brother! He moves around quite a bit and I already feel big and uncomfortable at times. I still have four months, including a cross-country move!

Peter is very cute and seems to understand perfectly well that there is a “baby in mommy’s tummy.” He says that a lot, sometimes very randomly. We’ve been going to toddler gym at the local rec center where they do exercises and other activities. He loves that and will either want to go to toddler gym, nursery, or Grandma Claire’s about every day. We’ll do each about one a week plus story time. That kid loves to read. He’ll read with me for over a half hour. But according to him, he still likes Sesame Street better.

It also snowed and stuck for the first time. It was fun going out and playing with Peter. He wanted to dig in the snow and got out his trowel to do so. Here’s a bunch of random pictures from the last few weeks:

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Blue Hubbard Squash

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I grew a nice big Blue Hubbard squash plant in my garden this year. I ended up with five good sized squash, the largest one weighing right around 25 pounds. They are extremely lovely, but I didn’t grow them to just display (although they have been a great fall decoration). I have yet to deal with a squash quite this intimidating, but after a little bit of Google search and the desire to make a winter squash pasta sauce I was ready to give it a try.

I picked a medium sized squash and washed off all the dirt. I then tackled the daunting task of getting it open. Methods I read about included opening it with a saw, cooking it for a bit and then go at it with a knife, but the one I was most willing to try was to just drop it on the floor. I stuck it in a plastic grocery bag, dropped and…

Ended up with two pretty evenly sized halves. Scooped out the insides, and dropped it several more times to get nice eighths. One half of a medium sized squash fit in my large crock pot. I cooked one part on high for 2.5 hrs and the other on low for six. In the end I had soft, delectable squash perfect for any pumpkin or winter squash recipe. I’ve made a pasta sauce and pumpkin chocolate chip cookies so far.

So my advice for the day (besides growing Blue Hubbard Squash) is to forget the saw or knife and drop the squash on the ground.

Fall Clean-up and Composting

I’ve finally reached 100 posts! I’ve been around for over two years so it took me a while. This blog is continuing to gain new direction, and its going to get a twist as I uproot myself to Georgia the beginning of next year. I have recently redone my template and categories and I’m trying to post a bit more. One part of this blog I want to introduce is showing good ideas I come across (wonders) and also all the blunders I also see, along with more how-to’s on gardening tasks.

So there is something I see all the time that makes me cringe: big black bags full of fall leaves and other plant debris destined for the dump. Reading blogs this year, I’ve gained a new appreciation of things like fall leaves. They are great for mulching and compost.

I went out and mowed a good section of lawn covered in leaves, even though it didn’t actually need mowing. The leaves are shredded up (don’t use the bagger on the mower please!) and add good organic matter to the lawn. Usually lawns can handle about two to four inches of leaves mulched right in. (Use the mower and don’t just ignore the leaves. Last year, there where several sections of pretty deep leaves that were left on a section of lawn, and ended up creating nice bare spots underneath. They popped right back, but it’s not very attractive and I still had leaves to deal with in the spring.)

Large trees  that drop too many leaves to be completely mulched into the lawn can be raked onto planting beds.  On bare planting beds, leaves can simply be piled high with out mulching and left to rot.

Fall is also a great time to get to all that compost that didn’t actually get composted. I completely neglected the compost spinner, and also had a large pile of perennial clippings. I got out the mower again and used it to shed everything up and put it on top of the planting beds. Stuff will break down more on it’s own through the winter, no mulch pile or spinner needed.

I was thinking of how much organic matter I’ve wasted. I’ve thrown way too much of it away because I was lazy. Some I’ve dumped off at the local compost center and re-bought it later in the form of compost. Not a bad little system, but in the fall it is pretty easy to mulch material on the beds and let it decompose over winter. You then aren’t faced with the possibility of extra weed seeds and salinity levels that can come from city compost, plus the extra transport and expense.

Gardens are cool–we plant small seeds and end up with huge plants. But do the soil a favor and don’t keep draining it by hauling away all the organic matter. Return it back. Mulch lawn clippings. Leave leaves and other plant debris on beds. Add compost. The soil will get better over time. On looking at the current soil situation in my garden, I have a light brown icky clay. If all the plant matter in that garden wouldn’t have been hauled away over the years and instead added back into the soil, I wouldn’t be looking at that same icky soil.

Purse from Pants

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So now that gardening season is over, I’ve enjoyed starting some new craft projects. I only have a large diaper bag and wanted a smaller purse that I could take to smaller outings. I cannot bring myself to spend money on this sort of thing, so I made one. I created it out of the bottom of a pair of worn out pants, an unwanted t-shirt, and fabric scrap so it cost me nothing.

To make it, I cut off the bottom of the pants to the length I wanted. Then I cut out a flap on the front so it folder over like a messenger bag.

I then sewed up the bottom and hemmed the unfinished sides. The handle was created from a similar project I did earlier, making a headband out of a t-shirt. There’s a good tutorial here for that. I sewed it on the inside of the bag. I then created a rolled flower for the front flap using this tutorial, and glued it on. The front flap is held down with Velcro I had. This is what it first looked like after all that:

Major problems. I didn’t have thread that matched and hated the results. So I unpicked the seams I hated and also rounded the corners a bit and re-sewed it all with matching thread. (Oh, and my machine which is a little bit broken was given me angst. I went to my mom’s and used hers. So much better.) Here’s the finished purse.

I love the results and have used it a few times already. Next time I would probably make the front flap fold down a little further, but otherwise it’s great.

 

 

 

 

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.