Like I was saying...in May sometime...

My predictions held true and it's basically just now that I'm finally back paying attention to things other than the bees.

Because wildflowers don't swarm into a scary buzzing mass on your shitty neighbors' fence and therefore require immediate containment so the reminder to deal with them is sorta less prevalent, let's say.

I imagine this is the reason more people plant wildflowers than keep bees, but what the hell do I know since I do both.

Plus, the other day, I made a failed attempt at fixing the light on my bike only to have to call Bubba away from his important Putting the New Grill Together project to help me twist a screw, so in addition to playing with 10,000 stinging insects and planting pretty flowers, I also dedicate time to pestering my  husband away from more pressing demands.

I'm just full of hobbies.

Anyway, I wanted to show you why my neighborhood thinks I'm bizarre. Also - give those of you who are interested in the progression of the front yard meadow an update on that mess. Handy that they are concepts one in the same.

Lawn, lawn, lawn, lawn, WILD ASS MEADOW SPILLING OVER THE SIDEWALK, lawn, lawn, lawn...

Yeah, the meadow is not what you might call restrained or orderly. You might call it pretty, whimsical, natural or xeric, but you definitely wouldn't call it tidy or organized.

That's in the backyard where I exercise my anal retentive side. I reserve the front yard for my I'm Off My Rocker side.

Back garden - neat and tidy

Front yard - WTF?! It's in my eyes! Is that a lady bug? Look at that big ass lizard!

Strangely enough, that's where the bees would rather hang out.

Want to attract bees to your yard? Throw a few borage seeds on the shittiest soil you have and watch the madness unfold.

They may not be honeybees but I have a definite soft spot for big, fuzzy, pollen hogging bumblebees in my poppies.

And this used to be the pee hole. We've come a long ways, y'all.

It may not have helped my neighborhood persona to be sitting on the sidewalk with my camera buried in the borage growing wild in the sidewalk patch for a solid half hour, but I sure did love seeing all my bees (every bee is MY bee, obviously) hogging down on the borage.

At least I'm not mowing a lawn. THAT is what real crazy people do.

Also new in the front yard - ALL THE GAURA MY MOM GAVE ME X100.

People, do you grow this stuff, Gaura? Because my mom does. And she has for as long as I can remember. And now that I think about it, she probably has no choice in the matter because as I'm coming to find out, this stuff will be right up there with cockroaches and Twinkies in the post-apocalyptic circle of life. Which, is kind of nice since it's pretty -  unlike cockroaches and what Twinkies do to your ass if you eat too many. Not that I know. I haven't had a Twinkie in probably 20 years, but I'm getting off topic.

See, last year, when I was all, "Mom, I have a bare patch in the front meadow, what should I put there that I can forget about forever without it dying?" she immediately ripped some Gaura from her yard, threw it into a pot WITHOUT DIRT and then let it sit on her back patio for, I'm guessing, weeks before handing it off to me to grow in my yard.

And you should know that when I got it, it did sort of look a bit ratty, but as soon as I planted it, it perked up and looked fine.

Which should have been my warning.

But, since that evidently did NOT serve as poignant enough warning for me, the one hundred little Gaura sproutlings that shot up in the front yard, gutter and sidewalk cracks this spring certainly should have.

Dudes - this stuff is bullet proof. And prolific. And it's a damn good thing it's nice looking and takes a brutal pruning like a champ because holy crap there's no stopping it now.

It's pink. It's white. It has green foliage. It has red foliage.

It's even man enough to fight back against the Mexican Feather grass and fescue. Whoa.

And against the patio you can see it beginning to take over UGHverywhere.

So, for those of you looking to plant something in Zone 9 or 10 that will be drought tolerant, abuse tolerant, frost tolerant, thrive through brutal prunings, reseed itself to cover all unplanted spaces, produce cute flowers, have a nice grassy effect AND outlive the End of Days - try Gaura.

And then begin sharpening your pruners.

Not totally pointless

I'm a sucker for free stuff.

There, I said it.

Granted, I've scaled back my acceptance of free stuff thanks to the hard lessons learned during the swag abundance of the tech boom (No one needs a toilet brush with a semiconductor company logo on it. And now I know that.), but there are some free things that can not be ignored.

Like free seeds for instance.

During the fourth of five trips Bubba and I made to OSH one Saturday (they think we drink), I got to play with the scratcher card we received at checkout for whatever hair-brained promotion they were running.

Voila! I (we) won a Free Packet of Wildflower Seeds. Squeee!

So, I proceeded to customer service, as instructed by said scratcher, and received not only my promised packet of seeds, but AN ADDITIONAL fortuitous packet of seeds. Extra squee! I didn't dare question the sanity of the employee behind the counter. I had extra seeds!

I don't have to tell you that my boisterous rejoicing went unaccompanied. Bubba seemed to be too wrapped up in the project at hand (rewiring the kitchen lights) to properly jump up and down with excitement. Sometimes I don't understand him.

Meanwhile I headed right home, two packets of wildflower seeds just burning a hole right through my palm, and quickly and unceremoniously forgot them on my potting bench for about six months.

Until the previous plantings in our pathetic sidewalk patch finally threw in the towel and died beneath a thick sheen of dog pee and neglect.

At that point, or rather at a point approximately two months later when I was sick and fucking tired of looking at a patch of skanky dirt in front of our house, I mustered up the patience to go to the nursery for plants that require shade, little water, thrive on neglect, compliment the front landscaping and don't cringe at the sight of a raised dog leg. Honestly, it's a tall order and not one I felt like tackling.

After a short time spent wandering the Shade-Loving aisles I decided to opt for the obvious and unglamourous choice of Sedge Somethingrother. I had some in the landscaping already, which hadn't died (woo!), so I figured it would work well enough. And, frankly, I really just wanted to go ogle the vegetables and fantasize about my pumpkin patch anyway, so Sedge fit the bill. I bought it in two colors just so I wouldn't be too boring.

Thankfully, it has seemed to stick in the sidewalk patch. Even with the frequent showers from our dog passersby, infrequent waterings and rampant neglect, it looks pretty fluffy and not brown - which was the main goal.

So, back to the seed part - basically, I was seeing success in the sidewalk patch and decided that since I'd conquered the "What the hell do I plant in this pee hole?" question, I decided it needed some spicing up.

Enter the wildflower seeds.

My thought was this: If wildflowers can exist in The Wild with all the animal pee and unstable conditions, they would probably stand half a chance in a location with some erratic care and hourly canine attention.

So, my big plan and I went out to the garage to find the long ignored wildflower seeds. After a little hunting I walked triumphantly back out to the sidewalk patch, tore open the packets and dumped them out on the soil around the Sedge.

Ok, done. Grow! It was all very scientific.

A few weeks later...

Queue the genius music, please!

Yes, those are poppies you see there. POPPIES! From seed! Who knew? Ok, I know where flowers come from, but COME ON. Right there growing in the pee hole?! Too good.

And some kind of pretty pink daisy thing.

And some kind of nice yellow daisy-type thing.

And some sort of blue bell-ish type flower.

And the crown jewel poppies! There are a couple now which will be adequately photographed so I can share and brag about my mastery of all pee-covered landscaping.

Oh the lushness of it all. So not brown and dead with only one sad dandelion posing as landscaping.

With this new information, it is possible that I may be able to keep our sidewalk patch from going totally to crap. In this housing market, it seems a shame to disavow any "land" even if it is dirty and covered in pee.

Next step in sucking less

Although, according to the dog, we definitely suck MORE.

When last we saw my front yard, it was looking like I'd taken to planting sod while drinking my 13th cocktail because WHOOPSY the lawn had been flipped over.

Thankfully, I meant to do that. And, thankfully, I rarely drink 13 cocktails in one sitting because - yarf.

The next thing to do, once the grass plugs showed up, was to tarp, mulch and plant the yard with the new less water sucking meadow grass and wildflowers.

And while that may all fit nice and neatly into one little sentence there, the process was nothing quite so little. Or nice. Especially when you consider how fucking hot it was in NorCal this past weekend. And if you consider that I first ran six miles (yay! Short taper distance!) and afterward I had a bachelorette party (not mine obviously) waiting for me.

I knew the exhaustion was going to be extreme. Which is why I was sort of hoping that High Country Gardens, the folks from whom I purchased my 210 (!) grass plugs, would have lame shipping practices that would result in the plugs not showing up until Monday. So that I could spend Saturday preparing for a night of binge drinking by methodically lining my stomach with mashed potatoes, dinner rolls or something equally absorbent.

But no. They're reliable over there at HCG, and when you say, "I want my stuff to ship on 9/21." It arrives the Friday of that week, just in time to be planted on the weekend and before it can totally die in the box because you're too busy working or taking the dog to the beach to do serious work like planting a meadow in your front yard like you would be if it showed up on the Monday you were secretly hoping for.

You understand - I'm lazy and I procrastinate. I was hoping their shipping methods would support these character flaws of mine. But they did not. Which, in hind sight, is a good thing since this time it would have meant a big box of dead grass and a bunch of money down the toi.

Anyway. Enough about my laziness.

Inspired by Knittah's recent comments, I'm going to press on in a sort of How To-sy way. And I'll try to add helpful nuggets in there as we go, but if I miss something, leave a comment and I'll try to answer your question if I know the answer. Which I might not.

And on that note, of not knowing everything (shhh! don't tell!), I also don't know everything about planting a xeric meadow, even though this series of posts may lead you to believe that I do, what with the numbered lists and all, but let me make it clear that I've never done this before and don't know if it'll take so just know that I'm not saying this is The Way to do this, but rather just the way *I* am doing this, so follow my How-To at your own risk. Personally, I'm optimistic about the results.

Anyway!

To introduce some sort of meaning to my How-To, you'll recall that steps 1 (cut up the sod) and 2 (flip it over) were covered in a previous post in which Bubba was nearly swallowed whole by a sod cutter.

For Step 3, then: Tarp the yard

I'd say "weedblock" or "Weedblock" or "landscape fabric" or whatever, other than "tarp", here, but the fact is that you can use most tarp-like materials to perform the function of blocking out weeds and you don't need me telling you which brand or type of material to use. Also, I'm not a shill for these products and merchants I mention and I don't want you thinking I am and then being all pissed when your "Weedblock" gets a tear just because you stepped on it when it was stretched tight and now you have to cover that hole with more tear-happy "Weedblock".

Not that this has necessarily happened to me. One hundred times.

Anyway - the point here is that once you've cut the sod and turned it over so that the decomposing grass can provide a nice compost for your new plugs, you should still tarp it to keep other weeds from invading your meadow and choking out your precious meadow grass plugs. Because I hear that this can happen. And I don't want any part of it.

Also know that when I say, "you", I mean "me", but it always comes out that way.

Step 4: Get some mulch and then go for a run while Bubba unloads it onto the tarp.

This came from Mountain View Garden Center and is just thin gorilla hair mulch.

Technically, you can be a good wife and unload it from the back of the truck because he was so nice to go pick it up during the week, which involved him shoveling it into the bed of the truck while wearing his nice work clothes and shoes, but you don't have to is what I'm saying.

You can just go for your run and then come home and rake it out, making sure that he makes note of how you just ran six miles and are totally awesome for immediately putting on your work clothes and getting down to business.

And, I will say this about Bubba, he's always the first to give me credit for doing anything remotely helpful. In fact, sometimes I think he may give me *too* much credit, but let's not go spreading that around.

Step 5: Water the mulch

We've capped the sprinklers, so are using this hose stand sprinkler thingee in the mean time. It's fine.

Now, this step, and the future ones where I tell you to water things, may seem counter-intuitive to the whole "suck less water" idea, but to get these guys established, I'm told that they will need to be watered at the outset. For root establishment and what not, so just do it and then hope to hell that they do establish and grow because if they don't we'll all look a little stupid for ignoring blatant instructions.

For now though, just water the mulch. This will help it mat together and be less fluffy so that when you go to plant, you don't have to wade through quite as much mulch to get down to the tarp and dirt. Plus, less will end up in your nose and I know you'll appreciate this as much as I do.

I do not enjoy mulch splinters in my nostrils.

Step 6: Distribute the grass plugs

Go ahead and say they're "SO CUTE!" because everyone else did.

Now, if this were, say, six years ago and I was still in that phase of my life where I didn't think two minutes ahead into the future, I would have just sat down at one corner of the yard with the box of plugs and started planting away. And not until I'd gotten, say, 3/4 of the yard planted would I realize that WHOOPSY I'd been planting the plugs too close together and SHITSHITSHIT had run out of plugs altogether.

Then there'd be some pretty elaborate swearing and either some mad cap unplanting and replanting or a race to the internet to order more plugs.

Thankfully, this is not six years ago and instead of engaging in that back-in-the-day-of-Finny madness I instead thought five minutes into the future (see mom, I AM growing up) and took one flat of plugs at a time (each flat has 70 plugs) and started dropping them at random but evenly dispersed intervals beginning at the far corner.

And don't you just know that the side of the yard at which I started was much more densely populated with tiny grassy plugs than the side of the yard at which I finished. And then all I had to do was grab a few from one side and toss them over to the other side in a way that was still random but less congested so we wouldn't have any unseemly bald spots in the event that the grass actually grew in right.

WOO! I learned from past mistakes! I'm growing as a person!

Step 7: Make dip

Not Hidden Valley, but still good.

Don't be ashamed if, at this point, you'd rather go inside and make some ranch dip and sit on the porch eating it with a big bag of potato chips, because I was right there with you. All this prep work is monotonous and, with all your neighbors standing around watching you organize fluffy grass poofs in your front yard, one can get a little self-conscious and feel like retreating into a big bowl of Leave Me Alone With My Craziness, but stay with me.

This dip is for the plugs. I hear it helps keep the plugs from drying out when you plant them and helps them establish sooner so that you don't have to wait forever and a day for your meadow to prove to your neighbors that you're not a total hippie loon.

This dip is a creepy thing though, let it be known. I added the recommended 1 ounce of dip to the recommended 4-5 gallons of water in my super old ass bucket with the broken handle grip and watched in grotesque amazement as this shit congealed into a spooky mass of dirty Jell-O.

Note that the dirt was already in the bucket and I don't believe it hurt anything.

Step 8: Scratch the plugs

Now, I forgot to take a photo of this process, but let me describe it to you.

See, each plug is like a tiny plant you might buy at the nursery. So when you take it out of the tray, it's got a mat of roots at the base, just like you'd find on your average 4" petunia seedling.

What you want to do here (and thanks to my garden savvy neighbor for reminding us of the crucial importance of this step) is "scratch" or cut the base of this mat off and "scratch" or slice down the sides of the root ball so that you have an open frayed end on your seedling - still holding onto some soil - but not all bound up in there with no hope to grow.

You can do this on all your plugs ahead of time to save a step at planting time, or, if you're like me, you can enlist the help of your Scratch Happy husband to do this while you start planting so that all the plugs are scratched by the time you reach them with your trowel with the intention of dipping and planting them.

We found that a standard box cutter worked really well for this. Just don't try to catch a flight afterward, ifyaknowwhatImean.

Step 9: Commence to planting

With your dip all jiggly and waiting (PORNO GARDENING ALERT), grab your pointiest trowel and get to work, already.

Goes like this:

Dig a hole
UPDATE: punching through the landscape fabric with your pointy trowel and planting the plug in the soil below.

Dip the plug

Plant the plug

Bubba and I did that 210 times in the course of about two hours. It was monotonous and it was blazing hot outside and the neighbors kept coming over with their kids to tell us how we could be doing it better, but in the end it got done and Bubba and I still speak to each other even though I had to make a sudden escape to the backyard when the neighborhood boy began telling me how we should be watering our "lawn" and wouldn't be satisfied with the explanation that this wasn't going to need to be watered for much longer but thanks for your help, buddy, and hey isn't your dad calling you?

I'll say it now, I have no patience for children and I have a really hard time hiding it. I'm sorry you had to learn about it this way.

Step 10: Survey your greatness while watering your new future meadow

Like I said before, there is watering involved in this process even though the desired end result is no watering at all.

So, now that your plugs are tucked into their own individual holes with goopy greatness covering their tender roots, you must water. And water good.

And if you know what song is going through my head right now because of that last statement, I'm glad you and I can be crazy together.

By this time it was mighty hot and I was jealous of the grass playing in the sprinklers.

Anyway, we watered (or, to be honest, Bubba watered while he shooed me off to the shower because he knew I felt nasty and really wanted to shower but was feeling guilty leaving him to water my future meadow) each individual plant and the overall future meadow until it was pretty well soaked and then, in the evening (and each with a cocktail) we did it again.

And then on Sunday, when I was in a hot rage thanks to Brett Favre and his old man football antics (RETIRE ALREADY DAMN YOU), we went out and watered again if only so that Bubba could introduce some comic relief into my life by surreptitiously watering my shoes/feet/legs/hair while pretending to water the future meadow.

He knows when I need a laugh and WOW did I need a laugh at that point. And no drinks because YAY I was hungover from the aforementioned bachelorette party and was nursing a swift little headache.

Freshly watered and ready to grow. Or so I hope.

Step 11: Wait and meanwhile order some bulbs

My plan is to randomly plant some wildflower bulbs in and amongst this meadow grass so that maybe one day it will look something like a mini meadow out there, so while this stuff decides whether it's going to live or die, I ordered a lot of wildflower bulbs.

Because shopping is the best medicine when you're worried that your big gardening bet isn't going to pay off and you might have just made a very public ass of yourself, so better to cover it with flowers.

I got some wildflower bulbs and I'm happy to say that I have managed to create a big old project for myself to dread because when these many bags of bulbs arrive I will be out in that yard for many hours getting them all planted.

But that's OK. It will give me time to talk to each seedling and remind them that they should grow big and strong and not make me look like a loser. Even though I will then look like a big freak for talking to my plants.

Take the good with the bad, I guess.

Remains of summer [+Adopt a Crop Winner]

I know I'm not the only one who takes a million pictures of shit and then never posts the pictures or talks about them, even if just to say Look at the awesome s'mores that I made in my backyard fireplace.

Good thing I didn't start avoiding sugar until fall.

Because there's definitely some added sugar in these.

Though there may just be more "Added other stuff" since it's more sugar than anything else. You know what I mean.

So, I'm doing a little fall cleaning of the summer photos to show you some of the good shit I shot while it was still warm enough for shorts around the firepit at night and naked butts in the high mountain lakes.

No. I will not be showing you naked butt photos.

Pervs.

This is close though. Go Lake Tahoe Derby Dames!

And here's a high mountain lake.

So, you can pretend I had a naked butt when I took this if you must.

And for those of you who just scrolled down to see who won the Adopt a Crop prize this season - you're in luck - I'm feeling generous and have bolded the winner: Mom Taxi Julie!

Shoot me your mailing address and real name (unless you like mail showing up as Mom Taxi Julie, in which case, right on) to finnyknitsATgmailDOTcom and I'll send you some randomness PLUS we get to be seed saving buddies next spring and summer. If you want. I mean, you don't *have* to. But - it'll be cool.

Come oooooooooooooon.

OK, back to the remains of summer.

I took approximately 100 photos of this volunteer sunflower. It was the prettiest. And the volunteeriest.

There were lots of bearding events with the bees and this wasn't even the half of it.

See those dots? Bees. All bees. Like the sky was vibrating. Awesome.

Volunteeriest sunflower some more.

All those wildflowers we saw while hiking in Tahoe. *wolf whistle*

Remember Kauai?

Yeah. Me too.

Oh, how I remember.

And then we had a bunch of BBQs.

Which double as dog parties. Obviously.

I'm sure there are a few photos I'm leaving out, but you get it - summer around here was short, sweet and we are lucky that we don't weigh a metric ton due to the eating frenzy.

So, with that, let's all give Fall a big hello while hoping it doesn't end up in our hair.

*Shiver*

Sucking Less has stopped sucking quite so hard.

 Honestly, I haven't 100% enjoyed the process of watching this meadow grass establish because it looked kinda spotty and shoddy and WTF did I do here all winter and I could feel the neighbors' doubting stares.

But, I soldiered on. I held my head high. I waggled the shame finger in their directions when they turned their sprinklers on to water their lawns. Then I went inside and ordered more grass plugs to fill in the blanks.

And I don't want anyone to think that this super cool and wet spring has been all super fun and I enjoyed it or anything because I was OVER IT about two months ago, but it's really done me a solid in the whole Establishing the Meadow Grass department.

Suck THAT doubting neighbors.

Yeah, so all that rain really was good for something. Even though we're still not out of Drought Status High Alert Stop Showering in California, but I kinda think it's a conspiracy to keep us all scared and dehydrated so that Arnold can maintain a super secret water slide park at his house in Sacramento, but whatever.

Drought Alerts or no, the meadow is definitely coming in.

You didn't know that Toyotas were native CA plants? Pfffft.

 And the rainbow poppy seeds and 800+bulbs I scattered over the whole mess are helping the scene quite a bit.

And then there's the fescue from our former overturned lawn that decided it liked growing upside down and from beneath a layer of weedblock and and mulch better than right side up with regular sprinkling, so we've got that going for us, too, since some of it has decided that the tiny grass plugs wanted to share their tiny grow hole with their fescue ancestors.

MOVE OVER!

I can't necessarily speak for the grass plugs when I say this, but I imagine they would have been fine with their own room. The fescue has turned out to be sort of a bully. But at least it's a green bully that lets me look like I know what I'm doing with the landscaping, so for now, it gets to stay.

OK. So I don't *really* look like I know what I'm doing, but at least it's not just dirt.

The fucking crab grass though? DISS. I pull it and throw it on the street pile for Pinchy to haul away. Hate you, crab grass.

Anyway, that's the latest on the Suck Less project in the front yard. The grass plugs, which I'd given until June (Hello, it's June. Handy!) to do something OR ELSE, have headed my warning and done things. Growing and Looking Decent things. Which makes me exceedingly happy.

I have put my bare toes right in this grass. It's pretty heavenly. If you like your feet tickled. Let's not talk about this anymore.

Also, when I was out cutting the seed heads off the combative fescue, one of the formerly doubtful neighbors stopped by and commented on how pretty the poppies looked and OH HEY maybe I'll switch to drought tolerant meadow grass, too, since my lawn is such a water-sucking pain in the ass.

Ok, so he didn't say it exactly like that, but if one neighbor considers replacing their lawn with low water native grasses, then I feel like my project is a success. Even if the whole neighborhood goes back to looking like a Chaparral forest like it was before we all got here and replaced it with the mall, which would obviously be terrible.

No sounds of lawn mowers at 7am on Saturday mornings. No gas fumes wafting up from sidewalks. No green manicured postage stamps devoid of natural life. No welcoming zones for pooping dogs passing by. No over-sprinkled walkways or gutters in the middle of the god damned summer FIX YOUR SPRINKLERS YOU LAZY ASSHOLES.

Yeah, that'd be a real shame if, instead, we had wildflowers and grasses blowing in the wind.

Sorry, sometimes I can be a preachy bitch. Enjoy!