Also: pictures!

FRONT YARD

Overall, for the record:


Stoopid lawn. It's as patchy and lame as ever. Although some clover has come up here and there, so I guess that's something. My next-door neighbour, with whom I share said stoopid lawn, has shared the depressing news that he has also tried to overseed it in years past and never had much luck.

Oh, purpleleaf sandcherry, how I ♥ you.


Money plant! This should be fun come the fall. It's surprisingly tall, too.


OMG. Scarlet Majesty tulips FTW. I am SO buying more of these next year.



BACK YARD

Overall:


I have finally figured out what patio furniture would work back here: a couple of nice adirondack chairs, especially in cedar so they could weather to a nice silvery colour, with a little side table and footstool(s). They're surprisingly comfortable, those things.

New shade bed, strictly for future reference. Weeds are already invading. Must make with the mulch!


Sun bed.


The yellow tulips were supposed to be part of a "french lace" blend of pink, white and purple. Somebody wasn't paying attention when they picked my order. Fortunately Breck's has an insanely generous return/replace policy, so they're sending me another batch, and I will just move the yellow ones somewhere else, because they are pretty stunning.

Wall bed.


Corner bed, featuring weeds, weeds, weeds. Ugh.


HowEVer, the very corner of said corner bed is looking quite nice.


Also, I was stoked to see that the trillium sent up two stalks this year! Maybe next year I might actually get two flowers out of it.


East bed.

Spring is early this year by a good month. I am having trouble finding this as creepy as I probably ought, because LOOK!

FRONT YARD

Overall view:


The magnolia is stunning.


The lawn reseeding has accomplished something? I guess? I hope this is grass or clover sprouting and not hellacious weeds.


Peonies coming back. Hopefully they will bloom this year. I don't THINK they're planted too deep - buds did form, they just shrivelled up and never opened. I suspect all the rain last summer may have provoked fungus of doom. Who knew peonies were so persnickety??


Behold the tulips! And irises! And my swank repurposing of old bricks from the backyard!


BACK YARD

Overall:


Compare to this time last year. See what I mean about spring arriving early this year? This photo is nowhere near as green. Also nowhere near as AWESOME. HAHAHAHAHAHAAA.


Primroses, as promised by the garden magazines, are lovely, and super-early bloomers. I think I have to track down some more of these.



The bloodroot is coming back, as is the sweet woodruff, but I see no ginger nor solomon's seal back here yet. Hmmmm.


I see three buds here. I'd dismiss it as a random freak of nature but it's not the only one. WTF?? Since when do tulips do this?


Look, it's the transplanted rose! I didn't kill it! Indeed it seems pretty happy in its new sunny spot. Just have to get something to prop it up - a nice obelisk type structure, maybe.

In lawn news, when I finally dragged the lawnmower out of its hiding place the other day, I discovered that the lawn's shagginess was not grass (ha! Imagine! GRASS, in MY LAWN? Surely you jest!) but some sort of feathery weed. I had noticed the feathery foliage before, but it was a pain in the ass to attack with my trusty weeder so I'd given up on it.

Now that it was about to bloom, it was conveniently much easier to spot and also much easier to get a grip on and yank. So I grubbed all of it out before mowing.

And good job I did, because come to find out, the stuff goes by the name of RAGWEED.

So today I struck the first blow in a task I have really not been looking forward to: rejuvenating the lawn.

I hate lawns, for the record. A lawn to me is a big fat waste of space, resources, and effort; also persnickety and generally a pain in the ass to maintain. I plan to get rid of as much lawn as I possibly can over the years to come, but I've got enough going on in the back yard right now that the front is just going to have to wait, especially since I don't want to annoy the neighbours with my flying-by-the-seat-of-my-pants hodgepodge of n00bish garden experiments. I will do my early messing around in the back yard and plan the front more carefully.

BUT in the meantime, there is still this sea of grass to deal with out front. Well, sea of weeds, really. I don't know what is going on, none of our neighbours have anything like the weed problem we do. Maybe I just don't mow often enough. In any case, my evil scheme going forward is as follows: weed like a madwoman; actually mow the lawn once in a blue moon; and dethatch, aerate, topdress, and overseed next month. Then we'll see what happens. If it still looks like crap in the spring, I will throw up my hands and declare it a lost cause.

So today I went out and bought a "Grampa's Weeder" from Lee Valley, one of the best garden purchases I have made all year. This thing uses minimal effort but still makes short work of plantains, dandelions, and even those bastard wood violets. If it has a central root (as opposed to, say, something like creeping charlie, which roots everywhere it touches the freaking ground) you can use this baby to wreak havoc and devastation upon it.

I then went out and spent 2h digging up all the plantains and dandelions and many additional nameless weeds. (It drives me crazy not knowing the names of weeds. Not that knowing what they are really gives me any useful information - it's a weed, right, what more do you need to know? But somehow it's so much more satisfying to yank it out when you know what it's called. "Aha, you bastard such-and-such, I have you now!!") The difference all this diligent effort made is depressingly subtle. Tomorrow I will muster out there again and tackle the rest of the wood violets and the nameless yellow-flowering stuff that's all over the front third of the yard. And also the goddamn creeping charlie, I suppose, although I'm not sure there's much point. What a thug of a plant that stuff is.