Let the Planting Begin

One of the (many) things that Hubby and I were dreading (the list is very, very small actually) with building again was the lawn- well, actually the lack of one- and having to coddle and nurture the "baby lawn" the builders put in until finally 5 years later you have a semi-yard.  Then the dandelions and miscellaneous weeds start setting in, you try to do the lawn care yourself, and finally end up saying, "Screw it, I'm calling in the professionals" and you hire a lawn care service.

Well, we've been in our lovely new home for a little over a month and I was starting to wonder if the "baby lawn" would ever be delivered.  Thanks to the April and then May showers, the delivery and installing of the lawn kept being pushed back.  Every storm that rolled through made me groan, knowing that all that great FREE lawn watering was going to waste on our mud heap.  We watched and waited and every rain produced nice little streams of water trickling down our ungraded backyard.  The "Barren Desert of Beazer" as Aidan called it was full of all sorts of wonderful rocks and junk left behind by the builders- things like broken glass, fast food wrappers, and pieces of 2x4's.  Nice!  Don't see those as landscaping ideas on HGTV, now do you???

Finally, I received a text yesterday by Laura, our building rep that I've become friends with through the process of building our home.  She gave me play-by-play commentary on my lawn going in: "Now they're grading your yard", "Now they're putting in the shrubs", "Now they're planting your tree-- yippee!!".  I was REALLY happy that we finally would have our yard, but also two lingering thoughts kept creeping back into my mind:  Since we weren't there while they were doing this, did they actually pick up all the crap out of the yard, or did they merely lay sod on top of it (I'm pretty sure it was probably the latter)? and Now that we have this wonderful lawn, how much are the water bills going to be over the next few years, as we obsessively water, water, water it???

When I came home yesterday, I must say that it was a wonderful site, seeing all the green instead of the desert landscape that we'd become accustomed to seeing.  Then, looking out over the backyard, waves of anxiety washed over me again as I realized, "Man, this is a big, freakin' yard!  How the heck are we going to keep this bad boy up?"... Especially since we live next to people who are OBSESSED with their yard (mind you, they have no kids.  Which means they have all the time in the world to water and love and talk sweet nothings to their lawn.  Unlike us, who are gone pretty much every single night of the week and most of the weekend, providing taxi service to our darling children. 

This weekend is Mother's Day and I figure I'd use that as my excuse to go play out in the yard.  I'm going to start by pulling the sod away from the house where the flower beds are going to go (I learned that the hard way in the last house that it's much harder to dig a flower bed once the lawn's established than to just pull up the sod where you don't want it to begin with).  I'm also going to let my younger son pick out a few things that he wants to grow-- he's expressed interest in having a garden, so I figured we'd go find him some things that we could place in pots up on the deck so the deer and rabbits and other "world's creatures" (as Aidan calls them) won't use them as a buffet. 

I'm terrified that I won't dig out the beds correctly, and that the flowers I pick won't grow.  But, I know the only way to figure out what I can and can't grow is through trial and error.  Lots of hard work and sweat await us for the next 10 or so years, but I know that all our big plans and hard work will eventually pay off...