Friday, March 25, 2011

Front yard meadow: 100% suckah free

For those of you sitting around biding your time until you could be, like, See Finny, I told you that meadow was going to look like crap, I guess you'll just have to sit around some more.

Though, from the looks of you, that's about all you're fit to do anyway.

Oh my god! So mean! I know. It happens. When people make fun of my garden, I fight dirty.

Good news for all you other people who don't suck: the meadow is alive and believes spring is coming!

Last frost date was March 1st, so it's been spring for a while, bitches.

Silly meadow. It's been raining for two solid weeks. And, there have been tornadoes nearby.

When you weren't looking, the first day of Spring came and went. We were here, where were you?

Oh. So, OK. Apparently this meadow, what with its xeric-ness and low maintenancenessocity, has something of an attitude.

I guess I would, too, though if I could do all this with nothing more than annual rainfall and a few minutes of weed pulling from time to time.

Do not cross me - the Great and Powerful Garden of Oz. Or something like that.

Funny thing about this crazy ass meadow of mine is that the former fescue lawn, which was dug up, flipped over, covered in landscape fabric and mulch and then planted with 280 grass plugs, 800+ wildflower bulbs and a multitude of wildflower seeds has really begun to flourish.

Like it's saying to us, Hey people, this is what I wanted all along when you two idiots where out here mowing me and fertilizing me and aerating me (what the hell was that anyway?). All along I just wanted to be flipped over, ignored and abused.

Fescue is so weird. And also a little bit sado? Strange.

That tall dark green spikiness? Fescue.

But - the shit is growing like nuts now and, to me, it's very cool. It grows in those lovely tall dark green clumps you see there and then it goes to seed with these tall fancy seed head wands that look ever so lovely intermixed with the native grass plugs, flowers and bulbs.

Unless you're Bubba.

If you're Bubba, you want to mow it down. You want to trim and tidy it because Fescue is Lawn. You want your wife to go out there with pruning shears and tame that shit. You want tornadoes to stop following you to California as though they can still smell the Kansas on you.

It's a hard time for Bubba.

Fortunately, he's let me be about the fescue's crazy growth. He's too distracted by our new tree's growth instead.

Take it from me, there's growth. Next time maybe I take a picture that shows that.
And, frankly, I doubt he ever thought we'd get to the stage we are in now with Wife's Funny Front Yard Meadow Idea, so he's probably operating mostly out of relief that no one has called the neighborhood blight committee on our asses.

See. That's progress. Toward something.
Yeah, because compared to last year at this time, we were looking a bit sparse in the Front Yard department. At least now it looks like we're trying *something* even if it's not *something* people are used to seeing. Specifically, a random ass meadow in the middle of the suburbs.

Though, to the credit of my neighbors, I've had more compliments than concerns about the state of our yard and, so far, no one has come by asking me to clear up the eyesore of our overgrown lawn.

Who would have the heart to mow down snowdrops anyway? Only monsters. And communists.

And if, by some wild hair inserted into your bum, you want to get rid of your lawn and put in a xeric meadow, I have just the article for you. Or, you could read through the long winded version on the blog here where you get extra swears and side stories at no extra charge.

Step 1: Flip the lawn over
Step 2: Plant one million grass plugs
Step 3: Plant one million wildflower bulbs
Step 4: Fill in the blanks
Step 5: Hunt down neighborhood jackasses that let their dogs poo in the meadow

I'm such a giver.

4 comments:

  1. Okay if I didn't have a crazy ass landlord who insists I water my lawn here in the desert, you know I'd be all over the front-yard meadow idea. And I'd read your instructions because what's lawn-care chit-chat without swearing?

    Hehe. Your husband smells like Kansas. That can't be good.

    ReplyDelete
  2. You know what? Our yard looks a lot like this. And it cheers me to know there isn't much to do with it because A. I am super lazy and B. I don't know how to take care of plants. yet.

    I think it looks awesome and I don't understand (with due respect to Bubba) why people want yards to look neat and tidy.

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  3. Psst. Finny? Looks like you forgot to de-weed and mow your front lawn. ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  4. It looks great! Come do the field next to my house for me, I'm tired of mowing it ;)

    ReplyDelete

[2013 update: You can't comment as an anonymous person anymore. Too many douchebags were leaving bullshit SPAM comments and my inbox was getting flooded, but if you're here to comment in a real way like a real person, go to it.]

Look at you commenting, that's fun.

So, here's the thing with commenting, unless you have an email address associated with your own profile, your comment will still post, but I won't have an email address with which to reply to you personally.

Sucks, right?

Anyway, to remedy this, I usually come back to my posts and post replies in the comment field with you.

But, if you ever want to email me directly to talk about pumpkins or shoes or what it's like to spend a good part of your day Swiffering - shoot me an email to finnyknitsATgmailDOTcom.

Cheers.