jedishampoo | Adventures of Mooch

I have griped about the bad things about living on the southside of Indianapolis... now I'll talk about something good. Being near my parents! If I am going to live in Indiana to be near my family, I figured I'd buy a house in the same township my parents live in, otherwise they'd never visit.

But I have discovered that buying a house means I must spend less money on certain things-- like food. I'm so poor! So I tend to show up at the folks' house for food. I call daily to see what they're doing.

Monday, 2:00 p.m.
Mom: Hello?
Me: Hi. What are you having for dinner?
Mom: Your daddy's getting Chinese carryout.
Me: HOORAY!

Tuesday, 2:oo p.m.
Mom: Hello?
Me: Hi. What are you having for dinner?
Mom: Pork chops.
Me: Awwwwwww....
Mom: But we have baked potatoes and sour cream and cauliflower and broccoli...
Me: HOORAY!

Wednesday:
Mom: Hello?
Me: Spaghetti tonight?
Mom: Yes.
Me: SEE YOU AT 5:30!

And I steal all the leftovers. They won't eat 'em anyway-- they'd just sit in their fridge and go bad. Me, now, I'm a real connoisseur of leftovers. I think I have all my mom's Tupperware at this point.

Oh, and the cicadas!

I tried to take a video of my yard with audio of the very loud cicadas. Sorry for the crappy video! Anyway, aren't they noisy? And also, can you see that crazy hill in my backyard? The previous owners took the drainage ditch and piled it with railroad ties, trying to turn it into some kind of country walk with flower beds and a 'stream.' However, only weeds grow there. I had to pay someone to kill the poison ivy and chop it all down.

On the flat parts we're trying to put down black landscaping fabric and lava rocks, but what do I do with that hill? The rocks would just roll down it. HELP ME.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

7veilsphaedra.livejournal.com

Okay, then you definitely need to get rid of the wood, asap. Because if you keep it, then you're going to attract termites and carpenter ants. Railway ties are usually treated with toxic chemicals like PCBs, so do not burn them. Bring them to your landfill.

It's hard to beat the cost of free, especially if you're thinking of it as a temporary fix. The only thing I would consider is if it will end up being more work to take out than haul in.

I would still get the trees in, though, because you don't live in a desert. You live in a lush and beautiful temperate zone, and the greener you go, the easier it will be on you for maintenance, on your pocketbook, and in terms of energy put into the place. Don't get stuck on only evergreens, because those shade trees really make a difference in the summer, and if your paycheck is going to a mortgage, you will want to have fruit trees because that's probably going to be where you'll get your food.

From:

jedishampoo.livejournal.com

Yeah, and I've already had carpenter ants! They were coming in from a river birch in my front yard - apparently carpenter ants loooove river birches. I love the tree, though; I had a man cut it back to keep it from touching my roof, but then he sprayed it all over with something deadly strong, so I've been avoiding it.

There's so much wood landscaping, though, that it would cost too much to have it pulled up and hauled away. I'm thinking about doing it little by little, starting with the wood closest to the house. At some point I will have to deal with my little 'wooden country bridge."

What's really sad about my considering all rock is that I have an incredibly green thumb, and I love gardening. But that area back there just frightens me. I think it's because I have so much to do in the house - painting, replacing a broken window, fixing the chimney, etc. :) I sometimes want to hang out at Menard's (the local village-sized hardware/home/garden store) and wait for those people from HGTV to show up and say "how would you like us to give you a fabulous backyard?"

I do appreciate all your thoughts, though... especially the pictures - some of those would be lovely to consider. The colors! ♥ I'd love to have some fruit trees, though I'd have to think about the yellowjacket problem-- they're really awful here unless you spray your fruit trees, but who wants sprayed fruit? How do you take care of them?

From:

7veilsphaedra.livejournal.com

Wasps can be such a noxious pest, but we haven't had the extreme heat lately, so they haven't been much of a problem — and easily controlled, in any case, by large fake paper nests that do double duty as Chinese lanterns (in the wasp world, bigger means better.) As far as spraying goes, I usually go after the nests and not the trees: no Buddhist inhibitions here. }D^:,`Those things are nasty!

If you don't mind getting wet, you could always put on the sprinkler when you're harvesting. The six-legged bugs don't like that much. Unfortunately, the two-legged sort do, especially if you don't wear a bra. ;^P~ (The hose usually works on them.)

The main thing with fruit trees is pruning and watering. A good overnight soak twice a week during hot, dry spells will keep the fruit plump and sweet. The pruning depends on how you want to shape the plant. The usual style is low-hanging boughs arching out from a central umbrel. Suckers need to be pruned, as well as those branches which shoot straight up off the fruit-bearing limbs.

Why don't you write HGTV and ask them if they would be interested? Explain that you're a single woman who is caring for elderly parents. Maybe they're looking for someone like you.

From:

jedishampoo.livejournal.com

(Getting back-- sorry for the delay!)

I think I'll need to get rid of several tree stumps - sawed off at ground level and recently discovered - to help with the insect problem. I have a great respect for ants, just not within a five-foot perimeter of the outside of my house, because it tends to extend their interest to the inside of my house, where there is air conditioning and food. :)

I do have a weeping cherry, but it doesn't seem to produce fruit so it must be purely ornamental. It's very pretty, though. I also have a small flowering plum, but it's very small and doesn't seem to produce fruit, either.

And YES, I have seriously considered trying to interest HGTV in my unique yard. My mom watches that channel all day so maybe she'll have an idea on who to write for what. :)

I think I'm kind of becoming sold on the 'creeping ground-cover' option for that hill, with perhaps an evergreen or two (it's really not that large). It would keep it green, give the spiders and bugs somewhere to hang without me needing to go in and bother them, and it would keep out the weeds. Some of the vines you showed - the Virginia creeper - were beautiful. I wonder if they would work on the ground... :)

From:

7veilsphaedra.livejournal.com

Basic garden plans for long term plantings should consider:

Colour:
Most ornamentals range the following colour spectrum of silver, grey, blue-grey, blue-green, hunter green, kelly green, bright emerald green, yellow-green, yellow, brown, violet and black (the last four tend to be rare.) One nice effect is to vary ornamental dwarf evergreens with deciduous shrubs that have bright red or violet trunks and stems, like Siberian dogwood or wild roses so that there is a nice interplay of colour in the winter when the leaves fall.

Texture: feathery leaves, fans, spearheads, spikes, fronds, umbrels, etc.. For evergreens: needles, firs, waxy leaves or powdery leaves. Grasses.

How it fills the space: Vines and espaliered fruit trees cover unattractive or worn wall and fence surfaces (although espaliered fruit needs babying) — at least during the summer. They can also crawl over pergolas and archways for shade and large-scale shaping. They create a nice background of colour and texture. So you plant them to break up a plain, boring wall-space. They aren't groundcover.

Shrubs and hedgerows provide windbreaks and privacy.

Ornamental shrubs can be shaped for interesting variety and contrast against the background space. Deciduous ones are usually chosen for the colour of their leaves in autumn (sumac, burning bush, wolf berries, etc.)

Dwarf evergreens also provide those interesting shapes and textures, although they tend to come in predetermined shapes that don't need much pruning (junipers are either ground cover or flare out, some trees are shaped like flames, some are 'fat and pudgey'.)

The shape of garden as it grows in: Height, shape, the space it fills. Think some tall and short trees and shrubs planted in 'staging areas', some perennials that can be switched out for variation in colour and texture (styles change over the years and you want that flexibility), and ground cover to beat back the weeds (usually lawn is chosen as the ground cover, but it looks like yours doesn't do well during hot summers.)

From:

7veilsphaedra.livejournal.com

So for your space:

Stumps. Ugh. If you can, get a professional to take those out and have the holes filled right away — a professional arborist because it's so much work! It isn't just the ants and termites you have to be aware of. When stumps decompose, they let off gasses and lye which makes the soil noxious for surrounding plants and changes the pH from acidic to alkalyne. That's bad news. If you were in a woodland area, I would say, drill holes, pour in water and let nature take its course. But you probably want your yard to look like something in a few years, so ...

If you can't afford that, consider building container gardens around the stumps.

Plant least one tall evergreen tree on the north/northeast side for winter colour, shelter for the birds and shelter from the north wind. Plant one deciduous shade tree near the house for summer coolness. If it's a fruit tree, you will have the prettiest blossoms in the spring, and they will smell like heaven, but you will get wasps.

Plant a background of 2-3 different vines right against the fence. Support them with netting. Let them crawl over the wood. They can be taken out later, when the staging areas grow in, but prior to that, you want something nice to look at. (Later, you might want to transplant them to places where you want to build secretive arbors.)

Intersperse the spaces between the vines with 2 to 3 trio-arrangements of dwarf evergreens and ornamental shrubs in the foreground. So that's 2 or 3 staging areas with 3 small trees and shrubs apiece, or 6 - 9 small to medium sized trees and shrubs in all. Choose them for the variety of their shapes, year-round colour, texture and height — the ones that grow taller should obviously be placed in the back, or kept trimmed right down. So you're constructing jewel box areas where all the different shapes, colours, textures and colours will give you lots of visual interest all year-round.

Until they fill in, (think about 4 - 5 years) plant perennial fillers in between them like wormwood (feathery, silver), daylilies (spikes), peonies/hydrangeas. When the trees start getting to be the right height and diameter, you can take the others out.

For ground cover, make sure you use a variety of colours and textures ... creeping jenny interspersed with scottish moss, for example.

__________

So, that's a plan for a backyard garden that will give you shade, shelter from the wind, privacy, visual interest all year round, interesting colours all year round and a means of keeping out the worst weeds (although you still have to keep on top of weeding; short of paving over everything, there's no way out of that.)

From:

jedishampoo.livejournal.com

P, thank you so much for all these thoughts... I should look up more of these online, and you're right about looking for long-term. I have just been so desperate that I was trying to think "how do I make it stop being annoying now?"

I always used to dream of what kinds of trees I wanted when I had my own yard. Japanese maples and those other purple-leafed maples often figured into my visions. I think the smaller Japanese Maple might work, but there should be nice colors on the side.

I am going to plant some bulbs this fall... and dig up some daylilies. Lots and lots of daylilies. I hate to dig up plants but the woman who lived here before me had almost completely opposite taste in flora from me. I'm hoping to find a home for them.

Anyway, just so you know, I'm memming and keeping all this in mind and mulling it over-- so thank you very much for all your time and input and thoughts! I've obviously been too stressed to think about it properly, but thinking about it properly will be fun. ♥

I am going to dig up