The drought and time had done a number on my yard and on the honey locust trees that had given me more beans that I could say grace over. They didn’t look good. When we had that rain back in June, the yard was green for a while, but it was nothing but careless weeds (pigweed) or kochia weeds, tumbleweeds, whatever. Anything but grass. But most of the time it was just brown and dirt. So, I decided it was time to stop worrying about dragging the hose and sprinkler around in an exercise of futility to have a green grass lawn. Water is becoming more precious these days as well, and I hated to waste it on mostly weeds. I called Bryce Thomason at Advanced Irrigation & Design. He took out six of those honey locust trees, scraped off all the weeds and lots of tree roots, and got to work building me a whole new look.
Bryce planted three Chinese Pistache trees and then put in an underground irrigation system to the trees and twelve red yuccas that runs off a timer app on my phone. There’s an app for everything, right? Then landscape cloth was spread out and tacked down to keep those weeds from coming back.
Avery Cantu, senior at MHS and a power lifter who has been helping me with other tasks, then helped me with the dry creek bed I wanted in the new yard. We strung out a water hose to kind of mark where it would go. We had earlier picked out and gathered rocks from the cactus bed that would become the border for the creek bed and piled them up on the other side of the driveway.
Then it was time for the path mix that would cover the landscape cloth and take the place of that grass that wouldn’t grow. It took more than one load of path mix to cover the whole yard.
The red yuccas, Hesperaloe parvifora, are the border separating the back of the front yard from the south side of the yard that actually has more grass than the front had, thanks to the septic tank , along with weeds. It will get mowed a few times a year when it gets tall enough to need it.
After the path mix was spread, then came the gravel for the middle of the dry creek bed.
And then Avery and I moved rocks by hand and Bryce moved some with the skid loader to the edge of the gravel, and we started making the border for the creek bed. One at a time we placed and replaced and changed rocks looking for just the right fit between the rocks. No pictures of that process were taken because we were too busy planting the rocks! But this is what we wound up with.
Next came the big rocks! Caroline and Neil brought them over from their inventory of big rocks on a big flat bed trailer. Bryce unloaded four big rocks and dumped them on the ground there by the trailer so we could study them to decide which side was their best side for their position in the yard. Then he took them to the yard, and we studied again from the road and decided where they would go.
And this is how it wound up.
After the rocks were set , we planted the three Agave havardianas. The agaves are not on the irrigation system since we weren’t sure just where they would go and agaves don’t need constant water like the trees do. i can easily hand water them as needed. More may be added later. Or not.
The last thing done was the curb to separate the yard from the road.
A small bed at the end of the driveway had to be removed for the curb to go there, so those rocks helped build a border at the other end of the curb to make it all look finished.
So, it’s a whole new yard that really needs to be seen up close and personal. Pictures really don’t do it justice. So, come by and check it out in person.
Thanks to Bryce Thomason and crew for the new yard and Neil and Caroline Kron for the big rocks.
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