Welcome To The Jungle

My yard was OK when we bought our house a year ago but it has gone down hill a bit.  I think two things happened that caused things to go downhill.  First, there was a period of time last summer when it didn't rain much and I never watered the yard and portions of the grass turned brown.  I thought those portions would come back with rain and warmth, and they may still, but so far they are still brown.

The second thing that happened that I think contributed is that last fall I spread fertilizer but did not put down weed prevention.  I have many more weeds this year than last and even in the fast few weeks the weeds have multiplied.  I spent some time this afternoon putting down a post-emergent selective herbicide to try to get things under control.  Then this fall I plan to spray the yard again to keep the weeds out over the winter.

Just like the mulch, I think I'll be able to turn things around, it just won't happen overnight.  I am still hoping the brown spots come back but they may not.  I might have to replant seed on the west end of my yard or ask someone (or a company) to help me get that portion of the yard up and going again.

Migrating Mulch

For as small as our lot is we have quite a bit of mulch.  It surrounds about 80% of our house plus we have two large patches in our back yard and several trees that are supposed to have mulch around them as well but don't currently.  The previous owners of our house had flowers haphazardly placed and they would pop up in the most random of places.  Plus one of our large trees in the mulch is dead (they still haven't come to pick it up yet) and another bush is way to large for its space and blocks the windows it is in front of.  Basically things are a mess.

We had a mulch and landscaping guy come out this weekend to assess the situation.  We are still awaiting his estimates on prices but he did mention that they usually charge $80/cubic yard to install new mulch.  Based on my calculation I estimated that we have at least 10X that much mulch if not more.  Even though we haven't received the prices yet Sarah and I have mostly decided that we are going to do things ourselves.  Sarah and her sister ripped out a bunch of flowers and plants yesterday.  I've begun the process of moving some of the mulch that we have in random places in the backyard around the trees that don't have any mulch.  I need to pick up a spade shovel so that I can adequately edge around the trees so that the mulch doesn't overflow into the street first.  Add to this that it is basically impossible for both of us to work on this project at the same time because of the twins and we're looking at a probably several weekend project.  Who even knows if we will be able to plant new stuff this year or if it will just remain bare.  The whole situation stresses me out.

It's That Time Of The Year Again

We've escaped the long and cold winter and spring is finally here!  This of course means I have to pay attention to the outside of my house again.  I've got a handful of projects I want to work on this year, including a couple of big ones.

• We have a large tree in our front yard that is dead and needs to be removed.  It has actually been dead for several months now but I wanted to wait until it warmed up before I had it removed.  That time has come and I've already called the tree people to come take it down.  This project was easy.
• My garage was filthy from all of the snow and salt this past winter, which subsequently meant we were tracking it into the house.  I had been wanting to clean my garage floor for months but wanted to wait until the snow was gone for the year.  I was able to get that done last week, so second check on the to do list for the spring.
• The mulch around our house is OK I think.  It is at least plentiful.  The mulch around our trees, however, is minimal to none.  It needs to be re-mulched which will basically be like starting from scratch.  This is one of the biggest projects I have lined up that I hope to have done within the next month or so.
• We really need to pull up some of the plants around our house and replace them with new ones.  I honestly don't know if we are going to get to that this year.  We might be able to pull up some of the plants this year but as far as planting goes that might get pushed back another year (Doing such a thing on the 3rd spring you've lived in a house isn't too bad is it?).
• We have outdoor lights that shine on our house and some of our trees but I haven't been able to figure out how to get them to work since I've lived in this house.  I really want to get those working and one of my friends said he'd help.
• I wanted to put down spring fertilizer on the lawn today but didn't get around to it.  I spent the afternoon finally replacing that window that broke during the polar vortex.  Of course that required a trip to Lowe's because I broke some of the pieces to the frame so I had to buy replacement parts.  I screwed around with that for probably 2 hours and honestly I'm crossing my fingers that it even holds up because I don't think my replacement is put together as well as the original.  I guess we will find out soon.  I also cleaned up all of the coal and wood the previous owners had dumped around one of the trees in the yard.  Yes, it took me a year to clean that up.

My list is probably short compared to some people's lists but it turns out when you have a full time job plus two part time jobs plus two infants getting things done can take a while.  I typically only have one to two days per week to get stuff done (usually it's just one) and if it happens to rain on that day (which commonly happens in spring) things typically get pushed back another week.  Truthfully with my new part time weekend job I am really starting to ask my self if it is better for me to work my normal job and pay someone to do my home projects.   If I have to work either way it might be better for me to do my normal job and leave the big landscaping jobs to the professionals.

The Unfortunate Reality of Modern Medicine

The Onion is a spoof news website that writes sarcastic and funny stories that reflect today's society.  This story about physician ratings sadly is quite accurate about how today's physicians are rated.  I find it pretty sad that anymore doctors are rated not by what they know or how good they are at their job but instead by meaningless measures such as the one mentioned in this story.  I kid about the seriousness of this to an extent, but you'd be surprised (or maybe not) by how many patients I pick up from Google.  I guess my ratings are good, at least for now.

Winter Is Back!