Friday, October 5, 2018

Projects

Now that the house has been saved, it's time for some long overdue projects.
The yard has always been a problem. 
Grass rarely grew there under the shade of all the trees.
Now that we've lost most of the trees, 
we finally have some grass growing.
However, there is a lot of erosion because of the lack of those trees.
It's just a never ending problem.
So, for our first project, my mom and I purchased some ornamental grasses 
to plant along side the relatively new steps down to the pier.
The steps help slow the flow of water,
and the grasses should help with additional erosion in the area once established. 


It wasn't all work, there was some goofing off.
Here I was channeling my inner Karate Kid.
I did this once when I was much younger on the taller pilings on the end of the pier.
I'm older and not as agile now.
I mean, even my dog Lucy was a little concerned.
The planting went a lot quicker and easier than we expected.
We got all 5 plants in the ground, put landscape fabric down, 
purchased mulch, ate lunch
and mulched in just a couple of hours.

For those interested, we have 2 different ornamental grass varieties.
One is a dwarf Maiden Grass that gets 3-4 feet tall and 3 ft wide
and the other is a dwarf Maiden Grass that is called Little Zebra and has the 
striped grass fronds. It gets 2-3 feet tall and wide. 

We were very pleased with the end result.
The grasses softened the steps,
and the mulch really polished it up.
Later we went out and purchased some solar lights to place in between the plants
and it really finished off the project perfectly.
Unfortunately, I couldn't get a decent evening shot of the light.
There are some other outdoorsy projects we need to get to.
We have a plan for fixing some eroded areas
that include grass seed and a firepit.