Digging

I have so much of the past two weeks digging it's crazy. I guess this is part of living in a house instead of an apartment! We've been working in the back yard to get a garden started (and accidentally hit a sprinkler line - whoops! Raised beds from now on!) but I had originally started on the front yard.

Specifically, this:

There are concrete curbs that make a quarter circle on each side of the driveway next to the sidewalk. One just had dead grass in it, but the other one had this bush in it. This dead bush. Not only was it dead, it was totally shot through with long, stringy crabgrass that was firmly attached to the ground.

I didn't realize what a big job this tiny patch of ground was going to be when I started! It took ALL DAY to dig this stupid thing up from the ground. It must have been planted when the house was built back in the nineties, because the roots were super thick and deep. The whole area was also full of roots for the previously mentioned crabgrass. It was a mess! I even found a good sized (thankfully abandoned) paper wasp nest under there. Yikes!

After a full day of digging and sifting through the dirt by hand in the driveway before putting it back in the bed, it was done. Sort of. I just needed to get some mulch and maybe some wildflower seeds to put in there.

Well, me being me, that bed sat empty for a month and a half. Yup, I'm a slacker!

Finally this week I went out there to tackle it. I had to break up the dirt again because it had gotten all hard and compacted again. I added a bag of something called Gro-Mulch, then sprinkled some wildflower seeds that I got in the dollar spot at Target in there. I gave it a good watering, then placed a layer of ground cover bark on top.

Doesn't it look so much better now? It's going to look even better once those flowers start to grow and bloom. Also, notice how green the grass is getting compared to the first photo? Not too shabby!