Adventures of Mooch

[jedishampoo]

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.

Comments

[7veilsphaedra.livejournal.com]

Although I adore beautiful avenues of cypress or lombardy poplars stretching into the distance, most places are not designed for them. From your description of the winds, you could plant a cypress, but it would need to be in a companion grouping with at least two other support trees. So, it would go on the far northeast side of the staging area, and then you would plant one sort of tall spreading evergreen (like a golden cedar) to the south and another (colorado blue spruce) to the west. That way, when a gale blows, that tree has others as backup. This is the forest-style planting.

Trees which grow in forests have less windfall because they have companions which help keep the roots interlocked and deep, and when they sway and bend, they are supported by each others' branches. When you take out trees in a forest, the remaining ones are much weaker than those that grow by themselves in a dale, and they tend to snap like matchsticks in a high wind. So, if you plant forest-style companion groves, don't take out any trees!

Another way to get trees to grow stronger, is to keep them topped and pruned.

[helliongoddess.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's why we lost the bradford pear and the pussy willow we have lost already (the pussy willow is reviving, one segment of it survived, but the bradford was a total loss) - the moron that owned the house before us, the same one that planted all the yuccas and pampas grass, didn't prune and top the trees. At least we got the bradford down before this storm that is barreling down on us right now hit - it was right by the driveway, and would surely have come down on top of my mustang, with my luck!

I even thought about trying a wall of the non-spreading bamboo as a wind- and noise-break - some of the varieties now are so pretty, but we are just one climate zone off from where it will grow. We can only do the rhizomatous kind, and I am not willing to take that on (it's just giant crab grass!) What I would really like to do is get a good landscape designer (one with an open mind, not a totally conventional one) to do a long-range design plan for me, with staged, prioritized lists of what we need to do over time, since we can't afford to do it all at once. I have an antique that my mother has told me I'm at liberty to sell if I don't want it (I don't! it's Queen Anne, which I don't care for, and just too pricey and fragile, it's always made me nervous, having it around.) Maybe if I can dump... err, sell... it, I can afford to get the landscaping really underway. It would mean much more to me in the long run than that damn highboy ever would.

[7veilsphaedra.livejournal.com]

If money is a consideration, then bide your time and do some research. Take a slow drive around and scope out the parks and gardens that attract you the most and make note of the trees they've planted, how they've arranged them, and what would work best for your yard in terms of sun/shade, soil composition and groundwater levels. Where I live, for example, pussy willows — all willows for that matter — are weed-trees which get into the plumbing and chomp through paved driveways like they were saltine crackers and block sewers. So they are a no-go for our area.

I threw together a rough outline of a garden plan for jedi up above. Maybe that would work for you. The basic principles are the same for any enclosed suburban-style of yard though, unless you're going for a formal garden, and it doesn't sound like that's your style. If it is, look up Sissinghurst or Hidcote and follow the planting principles laid out by those styles instead.