Tips for Seeding the Backyard

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As I sit here typing away, it’s a beautiful, warm day outside.

I’m going to go enjoy it — I promise. But it also means that with spring’s arrival, I’m no longer going to have excuses for not working outside on that long list of outdoor projects I still have yet to do. Some of which, involves a lot more of this (I hope):

When I filled in the back yard last summer, I did a quick seed spreading to try to get at least some of the grass to take before winter.

After all of that effort, I didn’t try very hard with the grass, but that should be no surprise to anyone. I was kinda tired of doing more yard work at that point.

Still, I was told that I should at least try to get a little growing, even if I postponed most of the effort until spring, since it would help both prevent erosion (all of that dirt took too much work to just wash away!) and give me fewer weeds to deal with when it started to warm up again.

Well, guess who’s got the windows open and the air off? Luckily, the dirt and topsoil have pretty much stayed put, so I feel pretty happy that I did an ok enough job for a gal who had never used a backhoe before to fill in that ugly sinkhole and get things more leveled out.

(BTW: I know it looks like there’s a slope now that wasn’t there last summer, but that’s just the camera angle because I never remember to stand in the same spots… I have the slope for rain runoff and was told by my landscaper neighbor not to change that so that the dirt didn’t build up, create puddles, or wash out in any particular spot… which seems to have worked quite well.)

One of the other best things I did for myself last year was to hire a guy to mow and maintain the front yard for me. He’s also the one who I hire for small odd jobs like pine straw (even after taking out most of my trees, there’s still plenty of pine straw that falls/blows over from the trees in neighbors’ yards), clearing off my roof (heights on an angled roof aren’t my favorite), gutters, etc. We’ve developed a good rapport, so this spring, I asked him to give me a quote on raking and over-seeding both the front and back yards. And hopefully soon, that means a lot more grass that he’ll have to mow. Win-win, right?

This is one of those situations where I know all of the other stuff I still want to do this year to the yard, and sometimes, even after figuring out how to DIY the job, outsourcing the work (like I do with mowing now) seems like the way to go. The biggest reason of all being that I hate pretty much everything to do with grass and landscaping that doesn’t involve flowers.

Of course, if I put grass back here, it will mean probably needing to find a better solution for Charlie, since putting her on a leash when she goes outside is a big factor in the patchiness around the last remaining tree (don’t forget: she jumps that fence, and the actual gate was wrecked when my dad took a spin on the backhoe, but I’ll have that fix in a new post as well). I’m working on a solution and will share soon.

Crossing my fingers, and I hope I’ll have a very green update for ya in a few weeks!