Got Grass?

I thought I should post a little blurb about our grass saga since I've been whining and going on and on and on and ON about it for weeks.  WELL, here's the dirt.  After the rains came (13 inches in two days), we were left with lots of ruts (as I've previously crabbed about) all over the yard. We were certain all the grass seed had washed away, and we watched sourly as our ditch started sprouting a kick-ass stand of grass.  What can ya do.

We started watering anyway.  I mean, why not.  So, for the past week, I have been tending to sprinklers every twenty or so minutes, getting covered in mud and sprayed in the face - a lot. It's rather difficult to get anything accomplished around here, when you have to constantly drop everything to rescue a stuck tractor-sprinkler, pull the hose or reposition stuff.  And then like I said, you come back muddy.  Argh.

Here's one of the many sprinkler races we watched...

And would you believe... that grass actually started growing? It did! 

But I have to admit - we wish it wasn't.  WHAT?! I know, what a statement after all the drama! Here's the predicament we are in now. The torrential downpour took a lot of our seed away and tore up the lawn in the process.  Now we have a bumpy, patchy and weedy conglomeration of a 'yard'. I don't know what would be worse - having none of it grow and having to start again... which would at least give us the smooth yard (but cost twice as much) OR grow what we can and address the problems after?  

It's starting to fill in, and from a distance isn't TOO bad...

I'm less upset about it than Ben.  I'm really just happy that anything is growing. I'll take a weed-grass mix any day over MUD.  

A River Runs Through It

When it rains it pours.  

Man!  We just cannot catch a break.  I did wish for rain, yes I did.  And Ben did stare out the window waiting for rain, yes he did. But seriously folks.  IT CAN STOP NOW ANYTIME!  I'm quite certain all of the grass seed has been washed away. I'm not kidding one little bit when I say it hasn't stopped raining since I wrote about the rain last time!  NOT KIDDING! nope. not one little bit.

If you don't believe me, take a look for yourself. 

This was empty yesterday... now it's not.

This is one of the silt fences (to stop erosion) Ben installed yesterday.  

See how nicely Mr. rain has carved an alternate route around it?

This is a small wading pool out front, 

which I'm pretty sure will be full of bull frogs by tonight.

and ahhh helpful rain gutters...

leading all the water to cut yet another trench across the yard

And would you believe the nerve of this asshole?!

Adventures in Grass Planting

For some silly reason I was thinking I'd have tons of time to blog now that the kids are in school. Right! I'm hoping it gets better, but the last few days have been nuts!  What have we been doing?

Saturday we got a lot of lingering projects finished, such as organizing our storage units so we can condense from TWO to one by the end of the month.  It took several hours, but we're almost there. After that, we headed to our neighbor's hog roast, which was really fun.  The kids had a blast and I finally got to meet the neighbors for more than two minutes.  Turns out, they're really nice!  They've got two boys, ages 2 and 1 - so Jacob will have some playmates around here as he gets older.  SCORE! Oh and the big thing about that evening is the motivation Ben came away with to PLANT OUR OWN GRASS. 

Normally, planting grass wouldn't be too bad of a job, but we're going to put in roughly three acres of grass, and it's pretty slopey - so we had just automatically called a couple landscapers for bids. Oh my holy lord! We really had no idea what to expect for a price, but certainly we thought the bids would be less than NINE and TWELVE THOUSAND bucks!   Hence, the decision to do it ourselves...

Both our neighbor (who planted his own yard) and a farmer down the road (who's done it a bunch of times) reassured us we COULD DO IT! Ben has the tractors, and the farmer said he'd loan us a seed spreader and some other thing... a cultimulcher. The farmer dropped the seeder over on Sunday - it was pretty small, but better than nothing - and Ben set to work on discing and leveling out some areas that had been washed away by the many rains. 

Monday, after the boys headed to school, we headed to the seed store.  After talking to the lady at the counter who knew everything under the sun about grass, we loaded up the entire back of the truck with seed, fertilizer and straw blanketing.  FULL.  HEAPING. 1,000 lbs!  We hauled it home, and Ben set to readying the ground for the fertilizer. Later that afternoon, Ben met the farmer over at their place to pick up the cultimulcher... but it wasn't there! Turns out a cousin had borrowed it without telling anyone and was using it that very day. Great. The farmer sent us home with something else to work with (a drag), and said his cousin would bring the cultimulcher over that night when he was done.

Charlie hauling the wagon for rock-picking-upping

Will tilling around the edges

Grandma spreading fertilizer - see the tiny spreader?

With the tiny spreader, we finally got the fertilizer down, but started to have doubts about the seed. We had TWO kinds, meaning we'd have to go over the whole thing twice... with this tiny seeder... and we still had to use the cultimulcher... and we were soon going to be running out of daylight.  It could definitely be done, but it meant Ben was probably going to have to take more time off work. Reluctantly, we called one of the landscapers to see if he could drill the seed in the morning for us. He said he'd work it in for $350. Sounds good.  OK.

At about 7:30 that evening, up the driveway comes the 'cousin' with the borrowed equipment behind his tractor. Turns out, he's a  neighbor as well - two houses down (which is also a little over a mile away, but who's counting?).  Ben noticed a giant spreader on the back of the tractor and the conversation went something like this:

Ben:  'Man, that's what I need'. 

Cousin: 'Why, what are you using?'

Ben points over to the tiny spreader. Cousin laughs...

Cousin: 'You can't use that! You want me to just do it?'

Ben: 'Are you serious?'

Cousin: 'Sure. We do this all the time."

Ben:'....... well, OK'

After Ben gave the 'OK', Cousin started dumping seed in his spreader and zipping around our yard like an animal! I could tell this wasn't his first rodeo. In about an hour and a half, with Cousin seeding, and Ben pulling the cultimulcher with his tractor - they planted all the grass! Cousin didn't want anything for his time - he felt bad to have had the equipment which was promised to us - and just seemed happy to help us out.  WOW.

Tuesday we laid the straw blankets where necessary and Ben spent the rest of the day staring out the window waiting for rain. It didn't rain all day... but it POURED last night.  Of course, we got four freakin' inches overnight. *sigh* We now have several new gulleys all over the place - and it's raining again.  

A few of the many new gullies

However, with that much ground to cover, I suppose it's unrealistic to expect it all to turn out perfectly. I'm sure we are going to have to do patching and re-seeding in areas, but that's okay. We are both feeling pretty good about the savings and the satisfaction of doing it ourselves. Now we just have to sit back and watch the grass grow.  Come on already! :-)