The Yard

Today it just keeps raining and raining. The aftermath of Hurricane Dolly has rolled in, pouring buckets and buckets of water on San Antonio. We have needed the rain, it has been a dry summer nearing water restrictions. However, this rain has halted the rip out progress on the front yard.

Three months after moving into our new San Antonio home (it will be 1 year this weekend) our lawn mower was promptly stolen after purchasing it. We do not want to buy a new one or pay someone to mow our lawn. So one year later we have begun removing most of the grass, to replace with vegetable and garden beds, much more rewarding than grass.

We are removing this grass, the cheapest means possible. Hard work, recycled newspaper, and free mulch from the city. It kills me that we actually will have to buy compost at $4.00 a bag ( really a fancy term for nourished dirt) but I have not given up hope an research that this too can be free.

A couple things we have learned in this: we are way too old (out of shape) to be digging up dirt and mulch, owning a truck (which we don't) really helps in the efficiency of these projects, buying a new lawn mower would have been the cheaper route.

In our excitement of learning that we could get free mulch, and as much as you wanted from the city- we drove out to nowhere uncertain of what to expect. We arrived at 30 feet mounds of mulch that we needed to shovel ourselves into our enclosed Honda Element. If we had a open bed truck a city employee would shovel the mulch into the bed using their plow. which takes 2 minutes and you leave with a truck full of mulch. If you do it the way we did it, after 45 minutes of shoveling in 95 degree heat, you get 1/3 of the mulch you really need, the inside of your car is filled with dirt (I mean everywhere) and you are covered in a layer of mulch residue. You still have to go home and shovel it out of the car.

It is not worth it.

We are renting a truck to finish this project because we are committed to stay married.

This brings me back to Hurricane Dolly. Though she has brought us all this rain, it also means this weekend will have higher humidity and more mosquito's -my two favorite things to manage while we are digging and shoveling.

Until we can go outside, I am reading The $64.00 Tomato. How one man Nearly Lost his Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden. William Alexander.
I love this book, and I don't think you need to garden to appreciate his tale.