my late night purchase

We attended the kids' school auction gala a couple of weeks ago. We didn't go crazy at the auction part of the gala. Okay, DH purchased 2 parties, the Cinco De Mayo party and the Man Party. I'm obviously not attending the Man Party. I'm not sure what the Man Party is but the description is "if you have to ask what the Man Party is, then it probably isn't the party for you." I imagine there will be a bus, a few bar stops, too many drinks & maybe alcohol induced illness involved. I'm glad I'm not attending. We've done the Cinco De Mayo party for a couple of years and I wanted to try a new one, so I purchased the Inwood Tavern party. A party with 12 couples, a band & drinks on the back patio at the World Famous Inwood Tavern sounds like good fun to me.

I never really went through the rest of the silent auction stuff and realized with a minute to go that it was closing. I was a little disappointed because I wanted to buy a tree.

A few drinks and a few hours later, I was still disappointed. I tracked down the guy in charge of the auction and told him I had to have a tree. Now I do!


The new live oak tree


In relation to the house


In relation to B & the 40 year old live oak on the other side of the yard


And because I had the camera out


J in a tree


B in a tree

weeds

Last year I spent a long time working in the back alley to spruce it up. (I guess I never took pictures of the completed alley, or at least I couldn't find any.) It went from patches of dirt and weeks to nice day lilies and mulch. It looked much better.

At least it did until midsummer when the weeds started taking over. DH weeded it thoroughly a few times between then and now. It's hard work to weed that area. This year, I wanted to try to stop them before they could take over.

I went the newspaper/compost route. Hopefully it will help suppress the weeds and if not, it might improve the soil back there. There is a layer of wet newspaper covered by 3-5 inches of compost, topped with what was left of the mulch from last year.

I am very happy that when DH weeded last week, he discovered that my day lilies from last year survived our harsh winter.



Now onto the next project.

A neighbor dropped off a half a truck load of garden soil. I need to remove my first attempt at weed suppression (cardboard with some leaves dumped on top, not much success) to the compost bin. I need to dig up the plants that are taking over the back of the bed. I need to build a trellis for tomato and maybe cucumber plants. Finally the kids and I can plant a garden. I know A is looking forward to it.

the dog and the yard

Three or so weeks into this, we're discovering that owning a dog isn't so simple.

For the first week the dog had digestive issues. We weren't too concerned about where he went as long as he made it outside, which for the most part, he did. Now that he's back to healthy digestion, we've become concerned about where he poops. Because this is his favorite spot:



Right in front of the playset, in the middle of the yard. Yelling "Watch out for poop" was getting really old.

We have an ugly side yard that we decided was the perfect place for a dog run. But it had issues.



We spent some money last year to lay down brick to cover up the scrubby dirt around our shed. However, we didn't spend much money and it wasn't laid properly. They raised the grade in front of the shed enough to stop drainage and the side yard floods whenever it rains. Which has been often this winter. If we wanted to use this as a dog run, I had to fix it.

I devoted several hours this weekend to pulling up brick, digging out sand & clay dirt, laying more sand and dumping pebbles.



Hopefully it will solve both of our issues at once.

Now we just have to convince Frankie that this is the best place in the world to poop!