Grass without a special card

Back to the garden. I made a little trade with an excavator friend and had the old shale driveway removed and carried away in just under an hour. Amazing what a tractor can do! I would have spent 2 Summers soaking and pitchforking and shoveling that out only to have no way to dispose of it. Stevie-T carried it all away in his dumptruck and then we had lunch. Sadly, we lost the big triangular planter boxes as they were in the way and starting to fall apart anyway.

With not much space to plant this year I started to seriously eye the East side yard. Technically, it’s part of the front yard because we live on a corner. It’s full of grass. Seriously ugly grass I refuse to water with any regularity and we never use. Last year I planted a Stella Cherry tree out there. More than one neighbor questioned my placement thinking that it would not get enough sun. Well, ha ha I did actually watch the sun before I chose the location and it’s thriving and makes some yummy sweet cherries. To me this means I should plant some more stuff out there. I need to plant somewhere other than the backyard because the chickens are killing everything I plant back there. I’ve been talking about removing the grass for many years and Jonathan really loves it. After a long conversation, which nearly escalated into an argument, I finally got him to delve deep and tell me why he’s so attached to the stupid grass. Grass makes him feel at home. That particular grass makes me feel frustrated. I love the grass in the backyard. It’s lush and green and soft. It’s soothing and cooling. It begs for the hammock and a good book. The grass in the front and side yard is dry and brown and useless. Poor Jonathan came home to patches of that grass being removed. I doubt he was truly surprised. I promptly planted 40 corn plants and dug out some more grass. I planted a Winter squash and then dug out some more grass. I planted some Pumpkins and then dug out some more grass. There’s still more grass to come out and now I have to go back for the crabgrass which seems to be thriving without all that taller grass to smother it. Where the heck does all that crabgrass come from anyway? Some flippin’ bird carries the seeds in his belly from the Central Valley? No one in Northern California plants crabgrass! It has had to travel from afar and I will have to spend the next 3 years pulling it out of my soil.

On the West side of the house I removed, shovel by shovel, about 120 square feet of grass and planted flower seeds and three fruit trees. The gophers got the apricot despite the gopher cage but so far the bing cherry and asian pear seem happy. I have room for one more dwarf tree over there. Haven’t decided what yet. Tons of crabgrass over there too.

On the East side of the house I am removing maybe 500 square feet of grass. In neighboring communities they pay you to remove grass. I’ve heard they pay $.50 per square foot in another local town. But not here….. Noooooo. We’re all hippy dippy and progressive and conscious but we’re not giving out money for grass removal. We’ll leave that to the larger more development-ridden cities. I could buy a lot of fencing and mulch and seeds with $.50 a foot.

There’s still grass in the front and there’s still that lovely patch in the back. Jonathan still feels at home.

Speaking of Jonathan, he has a new farming project of his own. We were watching a beehive at the fair this year and I said it would be nice if we could have bees. Well, guess what, this instant gratification family now has 2 beehives. They live on the West side of our porch and give that side of the garden a purpose. The bees love the cutting garden the boy and I planted and when the Bing and Pear trees bloom next Spring we should have bumper crops! We’ve had the hives for nearly 2 months and have only had 2 stings so far. Someone knocking on wood for me? The neighbors have noticed more bees on their fruiting and flowering plants and we really feel like we’re doing something important for this amazing little species.

And so, happy readers, I think that brings us up to date.