And I'm not going to show you a picture yet. Because we just finished. By the light of Brad's specially-rigged spotlight clamped to an upright rake. It's dark out, so the pics wouldn't turn out well. I'll try to do that this weekend.
We dug out the grass-- that's one heck of a chore down here, as the sod comes out with about two inches of wet sand attached to the bottom. A nine inch-by-nine inch piece weighs about ten pounds-- crazy. We dug that out, rather, Brad did most of the digging, on Monday afternoon. We ran up to the plant lady's house on Monday evening before finishing the digging. The plant lady is the owner of a native-plant-nursery about ten minutes north of our house. Native plants are preferred because they grow well, easily, and quickly, and her nursery is preferred because her prices are lowest. We got up there with ideas in mind, and she set us up nicely. When we arrived we were greeted by some lovely chickens, probably the biggest chickens I've ever seen. They even have feathers on their legs!
We chose our plants-- a pygmy date palm for the "triangle" near the front door,
some beautiful shrubs with dark green foliage and purple flowers, called ruellia, to fill in behind along the walls,
and some little yellow flowered ground cover that I can't find a picture of. We loaded everything into the trusty Nissan...
... headed home. After we unpacked the car and changed into "grubbies" we dug, and dug, and dug. Since we don't have a wheelbarrow and are watching the budget, Brad rigged up a makeshift one with a piece of plywood and our furniture dolly. It was quite a process-- dig out about 10 squares of 9 by 9 sod, plop onto plywood, pull down the driveway, down the street to the vacant lot next door, then toss each square, one by one, into the lot. I think we made about 25 trips, and if we never do it again it will be too soon.
Here's what it looked like when I got home, before I started helping. Doesn't look like a big area, but it's about 10 feet wide by 15 feet deep, so it's plenty. Admire the "wheelbarrow."
By the time we got done digging the sun was setting. It was a perfect evening to be outside-- maybe 70 with a breeze and gorgeous skies-- really couldn't ask for better. We took the last few smidgens of energy to place the plants so we could have a vision for what it would look like:
Sorry for the poor quality-- it was dark and the camera battery was nearly shot. Oh, and the rock? It was down in the dirt, and Brad dug that beast out. It's about a foot by a foot by a foot and a half. It's pretty ugly, but we thought we'd throw it in the left corner near where the downspout is.That was Monday. Tuesday Brad dug out the area on the other side of the garage in preparation for the extra three shrubs we found out we didn't need in the "triangle." I was no help as I had taken the first of my happy pills prescribed by my doc on Monday-- more on that in another post. Wednesday we got 15 bags of mulch - $1.67 a bag at Lowe's! - and put in the bushes by the garage. It looks soooo great. And tonight, Thursday, we put everything else in the ground. We're both so pleased. It makes the house look super. I'm a little uneasy about one bush making it-- when we took it out of the plastic container we found it was covered in ants, so Brad sprayed it down with ant-killer. We'll see if it's bush-killer as well. :)
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