Last fall and this spring I got the main lawn back to some semblance of normal by peeling off the dead sod, raking and seeding, and patching healthy sod from other areas where I'd removed it. Then again, I live in an older neighborhood where there's no such thing as the golf-course perfect yard. Which is fine with me. I don't have the disposition or the desire to use the amount of chemicals it would take to maintain perfection. If it's green and I can mow it, I'm good.
However.
There's not much I could do with the remainder of this crappy sod job, and that's where the curb-to-sidewalk easement was left. And it's been looking atrocious ever since:
One thing I'm sure of: turf is a lot of damn work, and I don't like it. The work OR the grass. A second thing I was sure of: I don't like backing into my garbage can sitting on the driveway on garbage day.
Put those two things together, and it seemed to me that I needed to do at least part of my curb strip in hardscaping. I wanted a landing spot for my garbage can, and I wanted anything but grass along part of it too.
My city's ordinances don't allow one to pave the easement; they don't care if you landscape as long as you understand that trenching for utilities can happen, and that they won't move or do anything to save it if they do need to trench.
Put those two things together, and it seemed to me that I needed to do at least part of my curb strip in hardscaping. I wanted a landing spot for my garbage can, and I wanted anything but grass along part of it too.
My city's ordinances don't allow one to pave the easement; they don't care if you landscape as long as you understand that trenching for utilities can happen, and that they won't move or do anything to save it if they do need to trench.
In that case, anything I did would have to be something I wouldn't cry over, and would be relatively quick to move or easy and inexpensive to say goodbye to. Another thing I have in my favor is that it's been my experience that my municipality gives residents PLENTY of notice for this kind of work, which I really appreciate.
This is what we came up with. The labor was provided by my college student, who was desperate enough to make a few bucks that he was willing to do the grunt work on this one (and I was all too willing to pay him for it!). The materials were a few landscaping pavers, bags of river rock, mulch, edgers, and extra daylilies from other places in the yard. To the right is the driveway.
The daylilies look cranky because of transplant stress, but they'll come back next spring strong. You can't really kill them.
But this is still very much a "during" rather than an "after." Below is the "panoramic" view. Sigh. We still have several square yards of weedy and muddy easement to conquer. It will look horrible until cooler weather arrives, when we can seed and water the rest of it for new grass.
In the meantime I sorta want to stand out in my front yard and call to the neighbors, "Hey. No worries! It looks bad now, but we're working on it! Really we are! We've got plans--big plans! Honest!"
Conquering the crappy, one square yard at a time.
But this is still very much a "during" rather than an "after." Below is the "panoramic" view. Sigh. We still have several square yards of weedy and muddy easement to conquer. It will look horrible until cooler weather arrives, when we can seed and water the rest of it for new grass.
In the meantime I sorta want to stand out in my front yard and call to the neighbors, "Hey. No worries! It looks bad now, but we're working on it! Really we are! We've got plans--big plans! Honest!"
Conquering the crappy, one square yard at a time.
Here's a post you might like: http://yeoldcollegetry.wordpress.com/2014/07/25/sometimes-you-just-throw-money-at-it/ Glad to see that you were willing/able to pay someone to do some grunt work for you. :-)
ReplyDeleteWhen we inherited our strip, it was full of red lava rock. We took those out and put a few plants in. We put a few more this year. It's so much easier than grass. No one else on the cul-de-sac has done that, but we're OK with being the neighbors with a kooky yard.
I am so at the throw-money-at-it stage for a lot of things right now. Thanks for the link, because it expresses a lot of where I'm at right now, the only question is, "which direction do I throw?"
DeleteWhere I used to live before, people put all sorts of plantings in their sidewalk areas. Most of them looked really nice, stuffed full of native meadow stuff, it was almost a competition. I guess if the utility people come through some hankies would come out, but how often do they have to do that?
ReplyDeleteI've seen communities where they've done that, and I really like it. It's not so much here, though. Me, I'm willing to risk a few daylilies and rocks.
DeleteWill your daylilies get so big they block your view?... Our neighbor has backed into the street twice and clipped other cars because of her's..... Anything I agree to plant in that kind of area has to very low growing and able to stand up to winter salt.
ReplyDeleteThese daylilies only get to be maybe 20 inches tall? So I don't think line of sight will be a problem. We'll have to see about winter salt, because that is very much an issue here.
DeleteI planted low-growing sedum that blooms pink (I can't remember the variety) in the hellstrip between my sidewalk and the street, and I put daylilies (Stella D'Oro) on either side of the walkway that crosses the sidewalk. They were doing really good until the guy who mows my grass weed-eated everything down to the ground. Grr. I googled "hellstrip gardens" to get ideas for what to plant there.
ReplyDeleteSo you call it a hellstrip too? I'd seen that word around on the internet but hesitated to use it because I didn't know if was an actual term or people just cussing them out. I could see that both ways. ;)
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