Yard Work Saturday

So Alex and I are living in a house for the first time since living with our parents.  This means, that it's the first time that we've been responsible for more than just a few potted plants on our apartment balcony.  We are so excited to have a yard, and a garden!  Ok, so we were kind of under the impression that we were going to be given a yard and beds to maintain and add to.  That's not quite what we got...

mostly empty bed

mostly empty bed

empty bed

dead grass/giant empty bed and a Bear for scale ;)

empty bed

According to the neighbor, the last tenant to actually care for the yard was over 5 years ago.  I believe it.  The owners hired gardeners to prepare it for us.  I'm pretty sure they were just told to rip everything out of the beds, and mow the grass/weeds.  That's all fine with us, we're happy to do the work, we just weren't expecting this much work. 

Our neighbor is a horticulturist (yes, these exist, and sometimes they are your neighbor when you need the expertise the most).   Unfortunately he seems a little jaded by the last five tenants, and I'm not sure he really believes that we will be making our yard beautiful.  To be fair, his yard is amazing and full of vegetables and flowers, and he has been subjected to people who let their grass get waist high in the past.  He even said that he took the weed-eater to the side/front yard of our house to prevent the grass from going to seed and affecting his yard.  Yikes.   

Well I can tell you now, Alex and I will not be like the past 5 tenants, and we will be maintaining and enhancing the yard we were given.  It's just going to take some time and work.  Ok, A LOT of time and work.  Saturday we picked up pine cones, tackled the weeks in the yard, and leved out the back bed (there was a huge pile of dirt behind the tree).

Here's Alex tackling the hill in the bed.

While he did that, I attacked what I can only assume to be prehistoric weeds.  Seriously, I've never seen such well established dandelions.  I took pictures of some of the more impressive roots...

yes, it is as big around as my finger

look at the length on this!

Alex kept asking me if I was going to show him the roots on every weed I pulled.  My answer was yes, because it was just unbelievable. 

While we worked, Bear hinted in the subtlest of ways that he wanted to play...

I did not stage that photo, he actually dropped his ball right on the shovel I was using.  Eventually, he gave up.

What was Edie doing during all this time??  Being cute of course!

Two hours, countless weeds, and one leveled giant dirt hill later we called it a day.  Now we have to figure out what will grow under a giant fir tree (according to the neighbor, not much), and get a plan of attack for some of the empty beds.  Also on the to do list... turning brown grass into green grass. 

Wish us luck (we're going to need it)!