Yard Woes

For background, check this out.

We live in a cute new subdivision – all the houses are less than 5 years old so there isn’t much in the way of landscaping yet.  Well, when we moved in, the owner of our house decided to hire a random handyman he knew to do our landscaping.  Bad idea.

Very bad idea.

We wound up with a front yard that is nothing but beauty bark.  Big, huge chunks of nasty bark.  There wasn’t any tarp put down under the bark so weeds grow up.  We’ve been dealing with this for 2 years now and finally the property management people have sent someone out to look at it.  The fabulous news is that we might be getting nice lush sod out front and hopefully on the sides, along with some nice mulch-type bark instead of the huge chunks!  Yay!

Of course, while out in the yard, walking around with the real landscape guru today, I got eaten up by carpenter ants.  Apparently, they love the bark and make their nests in it.  When they bite you, they actually inject a smidge of formic acid into the bite.  No wonder my feet aren’t happy tonight.

Glad to know that something loves the bark because I sure as hell do not.

Weeds, it’s whats for dinner.

I found this article really interesting!  Pretty much, it talks about uses for weeds that you may have growing in your lawn.  Right now!

Alas, we don’t have too many weeds in the backyard due to the sod and well, our front yard is a huge mess of improperly laid down beauty bark.  Note:  We did not put the bark all over the yard without a tarp down.  The landlord paid someone to do this shoddy thing.  We can’t mow it as the mower blades throw up the bark and its dangerous.  Therefore, every few days we(meaning the BF) break out the weed-eater and go to town on the damn weeds.  Ugg.  Needless to say, the weeds always come back, bigger and “better”.  As I’ve mentioned before, I do try to avoid chemicals in my gardening, so I’m not sure what to do.  I’m tempted to accidentally-on-purpose drop a bag of grass seed on the bark and see what happens.

Anyways, eat some weeds!  Apparently they are good in soups, salads and even coffee.   Plus, it just might make weeding a bit easier if you get to enjoy the fruits of your labor!

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