Grass Babies

We're working on our yard again. This year I'm trying not to miss that teeny tiny window that you get in the spring and fall to seed the lawn and transplant bushes. We decided to pay to have our lawn aerated and seeded this year. I tried in the spring and the aerator is too big to fit in our car and the cost of seed really adds up so when our lawn people called and said they'd aerate, seed, and fertilize the entire lawn for $150 Derrick and I decided that was a pretty darn good deal.

We're also entering the busiest 6 weeks of our year so far with 6 weddings, 2 of which are a flight away, work is picking up for me, and we have a lot of visitors in and out of the house for the next 6 weeks. Both guest rooms plus the air mattress have been and will continue to work overtime. This schedule meant Derrick and I were working in the yard Sunday at 6:30 PM in the rain in order to get the lawn prepped to be aerated on Monday morning.

This is what the front of our house looked like when we moved in. It was fine. But then all those bushes grew!

Here is another shot. See that tree on the right corner? Anyone that parked in our driveway would run into that tree when they got out of the car. This does show how pretty and green our grass can be. Sigh.

Fast forward to yesterday. We removed that tree in the spring and it looked a lot better and was no longer a hazard when getting out of the car. I also trimmed up all the bushes but what I've learned is the yard is pretty high maintenance and I just don't have time to work on it as much as I'd like. I do want it to look good though. So I decided that the entire row of plants in front of the sidewalk needed to go and turn into grass. I looked at a lot of houses in our neighborhood and a lot of them are like that. It looks nice and clean and then you can really focus on just making those back beds look good.  Also, look how bad the grass looks.

You're going down!

Derrick worked on getting the old tree root out while I pulled all the bushes up. Then we worked together on the rose bushes. The entire top layer of dirt came up here...the root systems of those roses and that tree were crazy!

I think it already looks better!

Last night Derrick and I got some straw to put over the seed. I'm not sure why but I've seen it done before and we're willing to try anything to get our grass growing.

Oooooo. Ahhhhhhh. Better right? Just nod and agree all you skeptics!

I did notice some poop in our yard...either deer or rabbit....so I put out a patrol to scare those critters away from our fresh seed! Crosby refused to be a team player and sit out there all day so I had to go with the next best thing.

I've read online that seed takes about 3 weeks to germinate. We're in the middle of a crazy rainy right now so the soil is nice and damp. We'll keep you posted on how it grows.