BrotherJoe

I've accepted the fact that many things I do on a regular basis are probably not good for the environment. I'm probably wasteful with energy and clean water in my home. I enjoy driving quite a bit, as recreation as well and transportation. I'm all about taking the scenic route. I enjoy drinking wine, which is an energy intensive product to bring to market. I buy products based on price and convenience without really thinking about the amount of energy that was invested to bring that product to market.

I haven't quantified any of this, but the popular term is "carbon footprint", and I'm guessing mine is fairly large. I've read about organizations that will allow me to buy "carbon credits" in order to offset my carbon footprint. These credits (my money) then get invested in clean energy technology, which is great, and reforestation projects, which I'm also a fan of.

This is all well and good, but I'm far less inclined to buy environmental improvement from some third party than I am to create environmental improvement in my own backyard - literally. I think of my yard as an oxygen factory. I keep my turf green and growing, I keep my trees healthy and I'm constantly adding live plant materials into my landscape. Right now, with everything in full green mode, I have an intuitive sense that tells me I'm producing a bunch of oxygen right on my own property. I've wondered if there's a good way to quantify this, and apparently somebody else had the same idea.

Oxygenfootprint.org is a website managed by the people at 10-20 Media, and best I can tell they're planning to create an "Oxygen Footprint" calculator that will allow you to calculate your oxygen production. I'm really interested to see how this works. I'll be especially curious to find out if it handles variables like actively growing turf vs. dormant turf, because the difference between walking barefoot on a lush cool green lawn and a crunchy brown dormant lawn is like night and day.

In any event it's a really cool idea. I'm much more interested in creating an oxygen producing green oasis in my own community than I am in sending a check to an organization that claims they can offset my carbon usage.

A year ago this spring, my kids and I planted 6 sunflower seeds outside our garage. My son was 3, and had no experience with growing things. I thought it would be a good opportunity to see something sprout from a seed and grow, given the right conditions. A week or so later 5 of the 6 seeds sprouted, and there was much rejoicing.

They grew, and quickly.
Full disclosure: I had never grown sunflowers either. I knew that they could get pretty large, but I honestly didn't expect them to be so...robust. Within a short time, these 5 leafy plants had grown taller than my daughter, then taller then my son, and when they got taller than me, my son stated, "Daddy, me had no idea these sunflowers get this big."

The sunflowers continued to grow until they were literally scraping my first floor gutters, and the flower heads were so large that the stalks began to bend under the weight. When the cool weather came we cut them down and stripped all the seeds off the flowers, nearly filling our red bucket. The kids really got a kick out of it and they learned a bunch too; proper planting, watering, locating plants in the right spot, and they even got to see phototropism first hand as the flowers tracked the sun across the sky. All in all a super educational experience.

And that brings us to this year. While cleaning out the garage this spring I found a huge cache of seeds from last year that had been stashed away. The boy and I felt like we should do something with them instead of just feeding them to the birds, so we started giving them away a handful at a time to anyone who agreed to plant them. We haven't gone crazy with it, but in addition to our much expanded sunflower plot (we have over 25 sprouts at the moment), several of our neighbors, both sets of grandparents, some out of town relatives, and my co-workers all have sunflowers planted that started with those 6 seeds last year. I even planted some in the office park where I work. They draw some interesting looks from the landscapers who care for the place.

I still have a ton of seeds, and if things go well I'll have a lot more in the fall. I encourage you to go out and plant something, even if it's just dropping some sunflower seeds in the dirt. You'll almost certainly be happy you did.

For many Americans, poinsettias are a symbol of the Christmas holidays. Their radiant color will brighten up your home, even in the dark of winter, and something about their specific shade of red really works for me. The connection of poinsettias to Christmas reaches back to a mexican legend. A young girl had no gift to lay by the manger at her church on Christmas, so as she walked to town she gathered some weeds into a bouquet. As she laid the bouquet by the manger it was miraculously transformed into what we now call a poinsettia.

It's a nice story, but if poinsettias were truly weeds I'd have much less trouble keeping them alive. It can be tough enough just to spell "poinsettia" in your thank you cards - actually keeping these plants alive is a bigger challenge. Or it was, until my wife got two great tips from a guy at the flower shop.

 

1) Keep it someplace sunny. This time of year it can be really tricky to keep anything in full sun. Additionally, I always picture poinsettias on a mantle or hearth, which aren't usually the brightest places in the room. So pick a south facing window if you have one, and make sure that the plant gets as much light as possible. We had the best luck with ours on top of a bookcase in front of a west facing window. You might not have an ideal location, but work with what you have.

2) Water it from the bottom up. Apparently, poinsettias are easily over-watered, and this contributes to the scraggly look that they often take on. The way to work around this is by watering them from the bottom up. Most of the time when you get a poinsettia, the pot is wrapped in either plastic or foil (or both). Instead of pouring water onto the soil, pour it in between the pot and the plastic wrapping. It will soak in through the bottom of the pot and get to the roots of the plant.  

These two bits of advice can keep your poinsettia thriving and colorful for many months. As much as I like them in winter, they look really nice in May or June as well.
 

My neighbor and I had a bit of a wager going, concerning the number of lawn mowings left in the season. My contention was that with the temperatures only recently dropping into our classic fall weather in these parts, we were bound to be cutting the grass until December. He felt otherwise, and following a week of chillier temperatures decided to winterize all his lawn equipment, essentially daring Mother Nature to throw any more warmth at us.

I'm historically forgetful about end of season equipment maintenance, and it's nice to have a neighbor who reminds me about such things. The idea is simple; if you do a few basic things properly after your last mowing, it can extend the life of your equipment and improve the performance of the equipment next time you use it. Most power equipment manuals have specific instructions for regular maintenance, and this is a good time to dig out the manual and read it over. Failing that, there's a few simple things you can do that will help you out in the long run.

1) Run your equipment out of gas. Gasoline left unused over the winter can lead to gummy deposits in your engine and carburetor. That's bad, and if you can run your mower or blower out of gasoline after the final use you'll help avoid this issue. If you've got a full tank of fuel to burn this can be tricky, and in the past I've used my mower to mulch fallen leaves in order to use up the available fuel. My current mower has a really handy fuel shutoff valve that allows me to leave the tank full, but run the engine/carb dry. Very clever.

2) Clean everything. Mowers seem to get filthy in the summer. If you have a mulching mower especially, you're bound to have some nasty caked up partially composted grass clippings all up in the underside of the mowing deck. Unplug the spark plug wire and get that stuff scraped out of there. Some people use this as an opportunity to take the blade off and sharpen it. Personally, I just wait and sharpen it in the spring.

3) Check the spark plug and air filter. It's really easy to forget about the air filters on your gas powered equipment, which is too bad. They also get terribly nasty and should be replaced regularly. Clogged air filters lead to poor efficiency and generally degrade your engine performance. It's a good idea to unscrew the spark plug, put a few drops of oil in the hole and pull the starter cord a few times to lubricate the cylinder. Be sure to screw the spark plug back in, lest you get unwanted junk in the cylinder while the mower sites in your garage.

4) Change the Oil. Yeah, this is where things get messy. Changing the oil on a lawn mower can be downright aggravating on some models, but it's a really good idea. As the saying goes; oil is cheaper than engines. Usually your mower will have a drain plug somewhere near where the engine meets the deck, and it's a simple matter of unscrewing that plug, tilting the mower so as to drain all the oil - while not spilling any, then replacing the plug and refilling the oil resevoir. Practically speaking, I've never managed to do this without making a mess and cursing. The best bet is to consult your owner's manual for the exact location of your oil drain plug.

I'm still convinced that I'll be mowing the lawn before again before the end of the year. But if you're already buttoning things up for the winter, be sure to take care of your equipment too. You'll be happy you did. 

 

Bradford Pear trees are probably the most commonly used landscape tree in my area, and their prevalence tends to dilute the fact that they really are nice trees. They have shiny foliage that they keep long into the fall. Their leaves stay green for a long time and slowly turn to a pretty reddish bronze. Well tended pear trees have a unique and distinct shape to them; they kind of remind me of spade from a deck of cards. And in good blooming seasons they are covered in tiny flowers that make them look like one plump white bud.

Typically this happens in the spring. Last week I was strolling around my office park and came upon a row of three or four pear trees in full bloom. In November. Very unusual. I asked around the office, and came across no one who seemed to have a good explanation for this, or who had ever seen something like this before.

When all other resources fail me on questions like this, I turn to Ron Wilson. He's the "Personal Yardboy" for a lot of Cincinnatians like myself, and he's a great guy taboot. He knew what I was talking about right off the bat, and the folks at Natorp's have been flagging trees that are behaving this way so they can check back with them in the spring. The best explanation he provided was that the drought this year led to an early leaf drop for a lot of trees, but the continued warm weather has the trees confused. Apparently it's only happening on trees that have lost their leaves already, and he mentioned that stressed trees may flower as a defense - they're trying to reproduce, is the line. Ron wasn't totally convinced of this explanation though, and basically smiled, shrugged, and said, "That's nature for you."

It's kind of a bummer that these trees won't be blooming in spring, but sometimes different is good. I've never seen anything like this in the fall, so I think it's cool. If nature was predictable, the pleasure of working in the outdoors would probably get boring in a hurry.

 

Work is always easier when you know you're helping someone out.

Last weekend my older brother Ben and I descended on my parents' house to help them with some yard work. For years when  we were younger, our time in the summer was measured out in yard work; mowing, trimming, pruning, mulching, weeding, deadheading and so forth, all laid out on lists that were to be completed before any fun was to be had that day. Ah, the memories. Not surprisingly, it's been years since I made my services available to the parents.

Sometime in the early 90's, my brothers and I gave my parents two weeping cherry trees and planted them on either side of their driveway. For years these trees were a harbinger of spring, exploding with pink blossoms - and the symmetry of their placement really tied the landscape together. This year has been a real bruiser around here. We're about 12" behind on rainfall, and these beautiful cherry trees took it on the chin. They had been inspected by Davey Tree last year, and the arborist said that these particular trees were in the autumn of their lives, so to speak. The drought this year was just the straw that broke the camel's back. That's 3 bad colloquialisms in 3 sentences, for those of you scoring at home.

As sad as it seemed, it was time for the trees to come down, and with the aid of a chainsaw it went pretty quick. There's an idea in psychology called Weber's Law; basically it defines a "just noticable difference" for different exchanges. It's the law that explains why people who buy a $2,000 suit can be convinced to buy a $100 belt at the same time. In the same vein, once those two trees came down it was open season on a whole mess of overgrown shrubs on their property. We figured, "Hey, if we took down the cherry trees, these taxus might as well come out too..." In the absence of a Bobcat, we hooked chains up to a van and yanked the shrubs out by the roots. Good times, though the trailer hitch is a little worse for the wear...

There's something unsettling about cutting down a tree you remember planting. I imagine this will happen more as I get older, but this was the first time that I've outlived a tree. The experience has reinforced to me how important it is to take care of trees in your landscape. Trees are slow moving, and it's easy to miss symptoms of problems when you see the tree everyday. I highly recommend having a certified arborist inspect all your trees. They know what to look for, and they can make recommendations about treatment if they do uncover any problems. The International Society of Arboriculture has a great locator tool on their website for finding a certified arborist in your area.

Also, I'm a big believer in watering your trees and shrubs. Even if you let your lawn go dormant in the hot part of the summer, remember to water your trees. They're much harder to replace. I found an awesome tool that's specifically for watering the root zone of trees and shrubs. It's called the Ross Root Feeder, and you can use it for fertilizing as well, though I mainly use it for watering without worrying about evaporation.

When it was all said and done, we had helped my parents take care of a lot of heavy lifting that they weren't going to tackle themselves. The whole thing was a stark contrast to my memories of summer labor in their yard. They were genuinely greatful, and since the help was freely given it was a lot more satisfying. The presence of cold beer helped as well...

I encourage anyone to help out a friend, family member or loved one with yard work. If they really need the help you'll be surprised how happy you can make them with even a small amount of effort. Maybe you have a parent or grandparent, or an elderly neighbor who could use the help. If not, Project EverGreen has a really cool program called GreenCare for Troops that you can look into. They will match you up with a military family who is short handed around the yard because they have a member deployed overseas. These people are stretched thin enough, if you can offer your assistance with their yard work it will be much appreciated.

Ed Wood was an American film director who made some of the worst movies ever committed to acetate. He truly gave the term "B-Movie" a standard by which all others were judged. These movies were terrible to the point of being unwatchable, and by all accounts Ed Wood himself was a bit of an odd duck. He thought of himself as an Orson Wells type who could single handedly manage all aspects of a movie production - and attempted to do so with almost none of the required skills or talents, armed only with a determination to make movies and a comfortable angora sweater.
No joke.
His movies include "Glen or Glenda", a bizarre pseudo-documentary about transvestiteism, and more famously, "Plan 9 from Outer Space", a disjointed tale involving aliens, police, and the original Vampira.

His life and work were brought back into the public eye by Tim Burton in the 1994 film, "Ed Wood", starring Johnny Depp, Martin Landau and Sarah Jessica Parker. I'm a huge fan of this movie. It portrays Ed Wood and his cohorts in an admirable light, and it includes a memorable scene where Landau, as an aged junkie Bela Lugosi, shouts "Pull the String!!" over and over again. It's a piece of work.

Fast forward to last weekend when I visited a garden center that was advertising a 40% off tree sale for the fall. I think it's a raw deal that most garden centers are forced to deeply discount trees at the exact time of year when homeowners should be planting them. That's another matter, though.

My wife and I had the general idea that we wanted a japanese maple for our back patio, but had no ideas beyond that. After a bit of nosing around, we found a 5 ft. maple that was unlike any that we'd seen before; it has green leaves instead of the more common red, it has bark that turns green in cool weather (how sweet is that?) and according to the sell tag it grows with an "open habit" - meaning that it can easily be coerced into growing with a lot of air space in between the branches. We were most impressed. I checked the tag and to my surprise it was labeled "Acer Palmatum 'Ed Wood'". This piqued my curiosity.

It turns out that a gentleman by the name of Edsal Wood was the owner of a seedling nursery in Oregon called Bonsai Village. In addition specializing in bonsai and specialty conifers, Edsal Wood also developed new varieties of japanese maples. I know now that it has no relation to the movie, but at the store the name slowed me down enough to take another look and we decided to buy the tree. Proof that branded plants work, I suppose.

The tree is home and planted and seems to be doing well so far. I was surprised about the relative lack of available online information about this type of tree. Last weekend was the first I'd seen one, and I can't think of any maples I've seen that look like this one. I'll have to post some pictures. On a related note, I encountered two different employees in the tree department as I was buying and picking up this tree. Both of them stopped to tell me that they were glad I picked Ed Wood variety, and mentioned that "not enough people appreciate the way they looked". In retrospect, there may be some comment here about my taste...but at the time it struck me that both of these guys were happy that the tree was going to get planted somewhere before the end of the season. They acted as if I was adopting the tree - and I think that's a great vibe to get off of a person who's selling you a living thing.

 

"And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense bearing tree"

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge
  

 

In my corner of Ohio, there is a time every year in late May and early June that is as distinct as any holiday. When the honeysuckle blooms it's as if everything draws to a sweet, narcotic halt, and your senses are overtaken by a cloying sludginess that truly signals the beginning of summer. Even when I was fairly young, I measured the coming of spring in terms of the smells; Easter came with hyacinths and early magnolias, then the smell of lilacs on the evening breeze - right when you notice the days growing longer. Honeysuckle and locust blooms shared the job of scenting the warm June evenings, but it was always the honeysuckle that was really a knock-down olfactory experience.

It turns out that there's a good reason for this phenomena; Bush Honeysuckle and Japanese Honeysuckle hold two seats in the top ten list of invasive plant species in Ohio. I find a certain irony in the fact that one of my most pleasant scent memories exists primarily because at some point honeysuckle was introduced to my region and decided to play bully with all the other underbrush. Today if I take a walk in the woods, easily 90% of the "non-tree" plant life is bush honeysuckle. While it's all well and good that the stuff smells so nice for a week or so every year, it's also seriously bad news if you happen to have it growing in your landscape.

Bush Honeysuckle is a pernicious space invader. It's no small wonder that Ohio has it listed as an invasive species. In a landscape it has a tendency to crowd out everything around it and more to the point: it won't die. It's like a malignant growth. You can treat it terribly, cut it down to the ground, kick it, scream at it, and it simply grows back. This can be handy if you like having a shrub that rejuvenates itself, but for most of us, it's a tremendous pain.

Last weekend I had the pleasure of removing a small (8" - 12") honeysuckle shrub from one of my landscape beds. It seemed like a small deal. I was using a pick and taking the opportunity to explain leverage to my son, leaning on the handle and prying up the roots, when suddenly there was a loud SNAP and the handle of my pick cracked in half.

Times like this you have to laugh. The lesson in leverage was either totally lost, or incredibly effective. Time will tell. The honeysuckle finally came out of the ground, but not without a lot more effort than seemed logical for the size of the plant. To cap it off, the roots of the honeysuckle had become entwined with a butterfly bush - which I wanted to keep - and in removing one I destroyed the other.
 

 

Here's the tool I broke. Maybe there's a lesson here about buying quality hand tools.

Maybe.

What I take from it is that honeysuckle is kind of like a raging keg party - it's better in someone else's yard. 

The most amazing thing happened in the last 24 hours.

It rained.

It's true what they say, that you don't know what you have until it's gone, and the rain has been gone for some time. Earlier this month we had about one inch over the course of three days, and before that it had not rained in SEVEN WEEKS. And on one hand, there's some benefits to this. I haven't cut my grass since July. You could plan an outdoor party and really not worry about getting wet. The Reds have had almost zero home rain outs.

However, in my mind the negatives outweigh the positives. My yard just isn't as pleasant without rain. The grass becomes dessicated and everything seems dusty and hot. My flowers and shrubs all wilt and wither, and the cool confines of my air conditioned home beckon me to just say "to heck with it" and go watch the game on television instead of frustrating myself outside.

 But a little rain goes a long way. Already my grass looks greener, and at the right angle I can see a fuzz of fine green blades standing upright amongst the dormant masses. The leaves on my trees seem to be larger, less wrinkled, and my perennials look taller, fuller. It's just great.

It's easy to complain about the weather, the one factor in my yard that is truly beyond my control, but I believe you have to take the bad with the good. Without this unpleasant aridness we've been experiencing, there's no way that I would eek such joy from an inch of rain. Our recent weather has given me a perspective that allows me to marvel at the effects of even a minute amount of moisture can bring to my garden. And for that I am truly grateful.

The highlight of my second grade year came very early. Fairfield, Ohio held an annual Indian Summer Days festival in September. It was your standard "Hooray for our town!" sort of event that seemed to celebrate civic pride and the return of children to school in equal measure. As a local businessman, my father was able to have one of his lawn care trucks in the parade to kick off the festival. I got to ride along and throw candy to all the kids my age that were lining the streets. Heady, sugar coated times. It was about a thousand degrees on the day of the parade, which melted some of the candy, but probably helped the beer sales. A co-worker told me on Friday that he wasn't particularly enjoying the "indian summer" we were having. It's been wretchedly hot for September. Half of the days this month have topped out over 90 and we're 12 inches behind on rain. The warm temperatures outside are still great for planting, though a lot of the plant materials at the garden store I frequent are looking a little worse for the wear after all the heat they've been exposed to. I managed to get some planting done - nothing too exciting - and that's good, because as it was I was cooked when I got finished.

Current weather notwithstanding, this same co-worker also reminded me that Autumn officially began this weekend - which made me just curious enough to look up the phrase "indian summer" and discovered that you can't really call it an indian summer unless you've had a hard frost already - and that it's usually in late autumn, This is just summer. Or it was until about 12 hours ago. So I've been wrong all along. I thought "indian summer" meant you were back in school and uncomfortably warm. Turns out it's more like the nice weather that lets you play backyard football some years at Thanksgiving.

The good folks in Fairfield have taken to calling it the "September Days" festival - though I imagine they're more concerned about the use of the word " indian" as they were the fact that it can't be an indian summer when summer hasn't ended.

 

The piece of equipment that I remember best was a 19" Toro "RecyclerMower". My parents picked it up used at some point in the late 80's - whenever it was that the idea of GrassCycling really took hold. Toro was marketing this piece of work as a mulching mower. It was the first I had ever heard of the concept of "mulching" grass clippings, but as a fairly young kid mowing a fairly big yard, I was immediately a fan of the idea. Environmental stewardship had less to do with it than the simple fact of never having to stop, empty the bag, and eventually pull the usually overloaded tarp back to the compost pile. But in retrospect I do think it was a bad drought year, so I was helping the grass as well.

The mower had an adjustable speed rear wheel drive that broke very quickly. It might have been broken when they bought it, but it would tease you by occasionally engaging the drive mechanism, and then quitting when you really could use it. We never bothered to get it fixed, so for the entire life of the machine it would take off on flat ground and require you to muscle it up hills. Really charming.

I used the mower a lot growing up, and when I got married and bought a house of my own, I was surprised to find it still lurking in shadows of my parents' garage. They didn't need it any more, so I inherited it. I had a small yard, but it's amazing how heavy a mower like that can be. It was designed to be propelled, so the focus was not on ergonomics. It had tiny wheels that usually spun, and usually stayed in a straight line. Usually.

After about one season in my new house I was fully ready to get a new mower.  Unfortunately, I've got this hangup about buying a replacement when the one I've got works. So I kept waiting, figuring that it had to stop working sooner or later.

Another season went by. It became a bit of a battle. I stopped checking the oil. I started on the first pull. I left it full of gas in my shed all winter, it roared to life the next spring without complaint. (Please note: this is not a good way to treat a mower).

Finally I lost the battle. After several years of abuse at my hands, my trusty RecylerMower, with the broken drivetrain and holes in the deck, outlived my willingness to keep it. I bought a new house and got a new mower. I donated the old one though, and I'd lay a bet that somebody out there is still using it today. 

I'd like to say a quick word about manure. Yes, manure. The smelly bovine byproduct that I have recently become an advocate of.

Prior to planting anything this spring, my father laid some sage advice on me, "A smart gardner spends 90 cents of every dollar on the soil, and 10 cents on the seed."

The previous owners of my house had a funny way of laying mulch. They must have figured that if 2" was good, 8" MUST be better. (This is a bad way of thinking, by the way) So I tilled all this mulch under last fall, and following my old man's advice went searching for the cheapest effective way to amend my soil. I don't have a pickup truck, so my options were a bit limited, but I ended up finding bagged manure at Meijer. I figured, hey, all those farmers can't just be using it because they enjoy the smell. They had a whole skid of 40 lb. bags, and there were weeds growing out of holes in the bag - which I took as a good sign.

I bought about 600 lbs. of the stuff, which made for a comical scene in the parking lot. There was this older gent sitting in a truck parked next to me, wearing a Navy ballcap and chewing on a toothpick. He seemed fairly amused to see a long haired individual like myself packing bags of manure into a Honda Civic. It's good to find amusement in things.

I set about the spreading and tilling of all this manure into my planting beds, much to the chagrin of my downwind neighbors. When I was done it looked promising - I had somewhere in the range of 6"-8" of fluffed up soil to work with, and into that went all the seedlings I had started a few weeks earlier.

In our part of Ohio we've had massive rain shortfall and all through May it was unseasonably warm. With the help of my wife and son we kept on a pretty strict watering schedule, and now I've got an agricultural overflow going on the southside of my house. It's like a jungle of vegetables, and it's the most success I've had growing anything, ever.

Here's some pictures.

 This is my son standing next to some sunflowers he planted. He had no idea what 'planting seeds' was all about. He does now.

The tomatoes. I have rarely been as excited about a plant.  

These are cantaloupe. My son really wanted to plant them, I'm surprised how well they're doing. There's a handful of little melons on these vines, and it's also taking over my yard. 

The Squash Monster. I've never seen anything grow so fast. If I see a squash in the morning it'll be ready to pick that evening. Crazy.

 

As I mentioned, I've planted a vegetable garden. Really it's just a strip of dirt off the south side of my garage. There were some overgrown boxwoods there, which actually survived transplanting and are doing very well, which is a bonus.

I started a bunch of stuff from seeds; tomatoes, peppers, squash,  basil - even cantaloupe at the urging of my son. These are some pictures from shortly after planting.

You've got beans there, and the squash further back. If you look REALLY close you can see some seriously puny tomato plants in the foreground.

 Reverse angle, with my daughter in the background.
 

 

 

I've been in my new house for a little over a year now, and this spring has given me the opportunity to actually do something with some of the outside areas that were in need of an overhaul.

May 15th has come and gone so here in Ohio we're in the safe zone for outdoor planting. With the help of my trusty 3 year old son we're venturing to install a couple of perennial beds, and a vegetable garden - which should be comical. I haven't grown a vegetable garden since I helped my parents when I was maybe 5 years old. We'll see how much useful knowledge I retained from that experience.... 

 I'm probably the type of home owner that landscapers aren't fond of; I have the motivation to do work myself, but I'm a little thin on the know-how. I know that one are I need to fill is up against the foundation, and faces due west - so it get crushed by the afternoon sun. With that in mind my wife enlisted google and found Springhill Gardens. They sell these pre-planned garden kits, and one of them was titled "Foundation Sun Garden". A bit on the nose, don't you think?

We'll see how it goes......

I love my yard because I love the change of seasons. I think it's great in the spring to realize that everything is starting to grow again. I like how in the summer the monstrous tree in my back yard shades our swing set and cools the breeze when I'm outside with the kids. I love grilling out in my backyard in the summer, and I love how in the fall when it begins to cool off all the grass turns that dark, dark green before going dormant for the winter. I love how the tiny hill in my back yard serves as a sledding hill for my son in the winter.

I love how my yard gives me a place to do stuff. I think there is something disctinctly American about having a chunk of land, big or small, that you can do with what you will. Maybe I want to plant a dozen trees in my yard so that in 20 years it's grown into a shady grove. Maybe I want to plant fruit trees, put in a vegtable garden, or grow some grapes. Or maybe I want to leave it as is so that I have plenty of open space to play football and throw parties.

In any case, what's cool about my yard is that I could do any number of things to sculpt it into my ideal vision, but for the moment it's a great place to toss frisbee and watch the grass grow.