Landscape Artists

My mom was here this weekend for a (too short) visit! Saturday, it POURED all day long, so we ended up going shopping, which is a perfect rainy day activity! J I bought a pair of sandals, and we found a perfect picture frame for our dining room, so it was a successful trip.

Sunday was a beautiful day, thank goodness. So, we headed to Home Depot to buy the necessary tools for preparing a garden. My mom is a master landscaper, so it’s good that she was here to help us!! We bought 3 bags of dehydrated cow manure (EWW!), 3 bags of peat moss, 4 bags of garden soil, a pointed shovel, a rake and a pitchfork. It was quite a trip! Then the fun began, we (by we I mean Brad, see right) had to dig up all the grass that was in the place where the garden will be. As he dug up chunks of it, my mom and I shook all the sand out of it and tossed it into bags (see below left) ! It was WORK for sure!!! After that was completed, we mixed all the stuff together and spread it around in the newly ungrassed spot in preparation for the garden. Mom ordered us 30 plants (about 9 different types) to plant in the readied area and it will be beautiful! She also drew us a diagram of where to plant everything, so we shall see how THAT goes in two weeks without supervision!! We will have the most beautiful garden in the neighborhood for sure.

The neighbor that is directly behind us (an Asian man) has some very interesting landscaping technique. Ever since we moved in last September, we have watched him working in his backyard. For pretty much all of September and October, he and his parents tilled the entire backyard by hand with rakes and stuff. It just looked really strange. So, their backyard is basically just one big plot of dirt. A couple of weeks ago, we saw him out there picking up all the scraps of stuff they had tilled and putting it into black garbage bags. Then, he was taking it out of the garbage bags and spreading it all around. (Isn’t that a little counter-productive??) Then, this past weekend, he was out there putting down grass seed. He had the spreader right next to him, but he was just throwing the grass seed out by hand. Very strange!!!!! We shall see….I am convince they are going to have a beautiful lush green lawn soon, but it remains to be seen if this unconventional method really helps the grass to grow.

And my cousin Rebecca came up for dinner because she was visiting the University of Maryland as one of her choices for grad school. It was great to see her, and we just found out today that she is going to attend the University of Maryland, so I will have a family member about 2 hours away! Pretty exciting!!!