AgentOrange
04-05-2012, 05:50 PM
My yard is really coming alive. Plants and critters are popping up. Most would call the authorities on the place, or sue me for "clean up", but I like it. One man's weed is another man's flower.
At first the place kinda looks like no one has lifted a finger here for a hundred years and "wild" has taken over.
That is not the case. Most want a nice lawn with a few box woods. I am OK with that. I like that look too, did it for 30 years. The last ten have been different for me. I don't even have a lawn mower. Now I use other tools.
I believe in the last ten years I have put at least as much money and sweat into my yard as any of my neighbors, and that includes the landscape services some employ. My crap is just hard to see for the untrained eye. A mile up the road are areas not touched by man for centuries. They look great, but not like my yard. Anywhere you focus below the "big picture", there are many fun, different types of plants including what many call weeds. I have many odd things I try to grow. I don't have to cut grass, but my yard still requires a lot of work. I work on it most days, year 'round. It has "year 'round" interest - at least to me. At first glance you cannot see that as I don't have time, energy, or desire to make it all pruned and neat. I like to let my plants grow as Nature intends as much as possible.
I don't fertilize much, but do need a couple hundred pounds right now. I mulch a lot, but my mulch guys seem to be out of business right now. By adding many, many trucks full of mulch to the yard over the last ten years (hard work), I now have decent soil over the local red clay. I raised and put a million earth worms into it.
Every year there is more shade, and I almost have lost the ability to do vegetables, but not quite.
The big problem the last couple years has been drought. I water and mulch, but I can't afford all that is needed. Just read water is going up next month. We have plenty of water, but they want to finance laying pipe in for developers who have bribed the councilmen (in my opinion).
All in all I have a place that is interesting - to me. It might look like crap to some who don't look closely enough or don't know what to look for.
I also have and encourage critters. Neighbors who kill them piss me off as few do much harm, and those are easily caught and moved. I have been doing it for ten years, never saw a need to kill a critter (poisonous snakes aside as I do defend the Beagles, the Cats and maybe the Bride.)
At first the place kinda looks like no one has lifted a finger here for a hundred years and "wild" has taken over.
That is not the case. Most want a nice lawn with a few box woods. I am OK with that. I like that look too, did it for 30 years. The last ten have been different for me. I don't even have a lawn mower. Now I use other tools.
I believe in the last ten years I have put at least as much money and sweat into my yard as any of my neighbors, and that includes the landscape services some employ. My crap is just hard to see for the untrained eye. A mile up the road are areas not touched by man for centuries. They look great, but not like my yard. Anywhere you focus below the "big picture", there are many fun, different types of plants including what many call weeds. I have many odd things I try to grow. I don't have to cut grass, but my yard still requires a lot of work. I work on it most days, year 'round. It has "year 'round" interest - at least to me. At first glance you cannot see that as I don't have time, energy, or desire to make it all pruned and neat. I like to let my plants grow as Nature intends as much as possible.
I don't fertilize much, but do need a couple hundred pounds right now. I mulch a lot, but my mulch guys seem to be out of business right now. By adding many, many trucks full of mulch to the yard over the last ten years (hard work), I now have decent soil over the local red clay. I raised and put a million earth worms into it.
Every year there is more shade, and I almost have lost the ability to do vegetables, but not quite.
The big problem the last couple years has been drought. I water and mulch, but I can't afford all that is needed. Just read water is going up next month. We have plenty of water, but they want to finance laying pipe in for developers who have bribed the councilmen (in my opinion).
All in all I have a place that is interesting - to me. It might look like crap to some who don't look closely enough or don't know what to look for.
I also have and encourage critters. Neighbors who kill them piss me off as few do much harm, and those are easily caught and moved. I have been doing it for ten years, never saw a need to kill a critter (poisonous snakes aside as I do defend the Beagles, the Cats and maybe the Bride.)