after watching our lawn slowly deteriorate over the past 5 years to the utter disaster it became this summer, adam and i decided it was finally time for a fix. exactly what that fix would entail, we weren't sure... but we were confident that whatever was required would be well beyond our skill level. after all, we're the morons that let it get to this point in the first place. clearly, it wasn't going to be worth our wasted time or energy to try and d.i.y. this project; it was time to call in the professionals.
our lawn was never perfect, and the contractor who built the house for us back in 2002 wasn't exactly an expert landscaper himself. being that we were both first-time home buyers (with zero experience or knowledge in this sort of thing) and poor college students (with no money to fix any problems even if the aforementioned lack of knowledge and experience hadn't prevented us from seeing them), we just kind of figured that the lawn would eventually fill in and we'd go with the old standby wait-and-see approach. for a couple of years it wasn't horrible, but never great. then last summer, things really went downhill. the yard was overrun with weeds... but with two little kids (one still crawling and inevitably putting random objects in his mouth), we really didn't want to treat the lawn with any sort of chemical. eventually, we noticed that even though there was green on the ground, we were pretty sure none of it was technically grass. things really got rough this spring when we saw that there were huge areas of nothing growing at all, not even our previously trusty weeds. not only was this absence of vegetation unattractive, but the patches of bare ground had the oh-so-pleasant effect of turning to mud when it rained. the kids' toys were so mud-splattered that it looked like the yard was slowly consuming everything that came near it.
here's an idea of how things were looking mid-summer. try to ignore our goofy daughter in the foreground and notice the conspicuously inadequate lawn we've provided her to play on...
after starting to worry that we'd eventually be visited by some kind of suburban child neglect service, we asked around a bit and got a recommendation for a lawn care company from a friend. adam called them and tried to help the person on the phone understand the severity of the situation. when the salesman actually showed up to inspect the lawn, his exact words were, "when you told me about this over the phone, you could never have convinced me it was this bad."
great. just the kind of reassurance we were looking for.
a consultation, a contract, and several hundred dollars later, we were on a path that should eventually lead to actual grass in our yard. we bit the bullet and had some weed treatments sprayed over the summer, knowing that if we didn't kill off the mutant weeds, grass seed would never be able to grow properly. we also fertilized the hell out of the place, and did lots of crossing of fingers and praying to the lush lawn gods. (ok, those last two weren't professional recommendations, but they couldn't hurt, right?) we don't even care that the grass is perfect - we just wanted some kind of actual green growth covering the entire yard.
so wednesday was the big seeding day. we spend monday and tuesday ripping up what was left of our old lawn - tilling and raking until i started to wonder whether the purchase of a mule at this point would be a sensible investment.
here's what things are looking like right now - this is the view from the fenced-in side yard, looking out toward the front yard....
i've told adam several times now that i think the yard actually looks better now. at least it looks intentional.
and now... we water diligently, do more of that finger-crossing, and just wait and see. 7:04 PM //
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